Walking In A Winter Wonderland...

Last weeend saw myself and five others making our way to Sapporo, main city of northernmost Japanese island Hokkaido, for several days of marvelling at huge snow sculptures by day and taking advantage of Japan's dangerously relaxed drinking culture by night at the 2006 Yuki Matsuri or 'snow festival'.

We all arrived easily enough early Friday evening and wasted no time in making our way to Sapporo's premier spa/capsule hotel complex, Safro Spa, located slap bang in the middle of the city's notorious red light district, Susukino. The dubious delights of 'soap houses' and 'massage parlours' were passed over however, in favour of a tour of Odori Park by night.

Odori (literally, 'big street') is where this year's star snow sculpture attractions were located, centred around all manner of crazy themes. The really big ones were largely likenesses of obscure public buildings from around the world, (with bands playing on huge stages in front of them, which was a nice touch) or else were celebrations of Japanese sports stars such as golfer Ai Miyazato (pictured) or other pop culture icons, such as the recent release of 'The Chronicles Of Narnia' (also pictured in trippy technocolour).

These mammoth triumphs of of sub-zero engineering were very impressive to be sure, but the thing that got me slightly was the size of the advertising hoardings placed next to the larger sculptures. Obviously, it takes a lot of money to organise an event like this and sponsorship is a necessary evil, but I couldn't help thinking that the bloody great boards advertising the benefactors for many of the sculptures could have been placed a little more tactfully for the sake of the crowds wanting to get a decent look at them.

After this, it all gets rather hazy as we embarked on the first of our evening drinking sessions, including a nomihodai (all you can drink) offer. Most of us went in on one of these every night we were there, which goes some way to explaining later events...