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Hokkaido
Ice Festivals
By Patrick Totty
Europeans and North Americans tend
to think of Canadian or Scandinavian show festivals when they imagine
ice palaces and frozen sculptures. For example, the Quebec City Winter
Carnival, (December 2001 The Cultured Traveler) an annual
pre-Lenten blast, regularly draws 1 million visitors to its array of
balls, parades, fanciful ice structures and general cold-weather
merriment.
So it adds to the fun to learn that
East Asians, millions of whom are no strangers to deep winters, have
their own set of long established winter festivals that more than match
their European and North American counterparts in pageantry and whimsy.
For example, the festival in Harbin, China, is one of mainland Asia’s
top annual winter events.
But perhaps the Asian festivals most
attractive to First World travelers are four events held annually on
Hokkaido, the northernmost island of the Japanese Archipelago and site
of the 1972 Winter Olympics at Sapporo. They are the Asahikawa
International Ice Sculpture Festival, the Sounkyo Ice Fall Festival, the
Abashiri Drift Ice Festival and the Sapporo Snow Festival.
The Japanese do at these festivals
pretty much the same thing that the Swedes or Quebeckers do at theirs:
carve elaborate ice sculptures, build temporary structures that they
illuminate from within at night, hold winter-themed competitions and eat
a lot to maintain their dark month metabolisms.
Hokkaido, which many Japanese
jokingly refer to as “our Wild West,” is Japan’s version of Alaska
or western Alberta – a mountainous, forested land that receives heavy
winter snowfall. Since most people associate Japan with the more
temperate climes of Honshu and Kyushu islands, they tend to think of
Hokkaido as a Yukon-esque outpost, well off the mainstream of Japanese
culture. That stereotype carries some elements of truth – most
Japanese do prefer warmer, less out-of-the-way locations – but
Hokkaido is one of those places where a little digging (not just in
snow) reveals some pleasant discoveries.
For one thing, Hokkaido is a little
less formal than the rest of Japan. That’s the result of distance, the
need to adjust to a climate that is no respecter of formality and the
region’s attractiveness to people who want to live in Japan but in a
place that’s a little less starched around the collar.
Add to that a First-World level of
technology and services – electronic communications, airports,
hospitals, schools, shops, highways, hotels – as well as traditional
Japanese hospitality, and the attractiveness of Hokkaido in winter
becomes apparent.
But beyond the comforts,
sophistication and relative level of familiarity it offers, Hokkaido is
an uncrowded, intensely green land, surrounded by deep ocean and the
site of some of the best bird watching on earth. Many ice festival
visitors head out to the island’s forests, lakes and marshlands to see
cranes, sea eagles, swans, ducks and auklets in abundance.
Some useful URLs:
http://www.snowfes.com/english/index_e.html