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| Hokkaido is the top light orange island. Look for Sapporo city. |
Last week we took the kids out of school and spent a few days in Hokkaido, Japan. Hokkaido is the Japanese island furthest to the north and is known for it's wonderful winter sports and for the Sapporo Snow Festival which takes place for one week in February every year. Matt was looking forward to a ski trip and I really wanted to see the Snow Festival, so we decided to combine the two trips.
We flew into Sapporo airport on Sunday afternoon. It was about a 2 hour flight, followed by a 1.5 hour bus ride to our resort Kiroro Snow World. The resort was recommended as a good place for families. It's not as crowded as some of the major ski resorts in the area and has a good kids ski school combined with a lot of other activities for kids. The skiing piece of the resort was great, the hotel was not! It was clean but incredibly shabby and the rock hard beds in Japan make sleeping a chore. We still had a good time though!
Laura couldn't wait to get out on the slopes so as soon as we got there, we had to go straight to the ski shop to get outfitted. Luckily, they provide everything! We did have our own gloves and hats but the rental shop provided everything else and it was pretty decent quality. Matt, Laura and Nathan immediately hit the slopes, even though it was getting dark by the time they were all geared up.
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| Geared up and ready to try skiing for the first time. |
Nate and Laura both made it down the bunny hill a few times. Next Matt convinced Laura to try riding the ski lift up the family slope. She made it about 1/4 of the way down before she fell and hit her nose. They ended up walking the rest of the way down.
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| Laura and Matt walking down the family slope |
I was sure the trip was doomed after that!
Instead, we signed Nate and Laura up for Annie's Kids Ski Academy the next day. It was wonderful! After 2 hours they could both ski! However, the cold, wind and constantly falling snow wore them out and we retired to the hotel room for an afternoon of watching movies on the iPad!
Matt spent the morning reacquainting himself with skiing and was able to get in a number of great runs during the afternoon. Katie did try skiing once, but quickly decided that she didn't like falling.
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| Katie getting ready to try skiing |
I decided well in advance that attempting to ski for the first time at age 39 was not a good idea, so Katie and I spent the morning sled riding, snacking at the cafeteria and taking pictures.
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| She quickly decided sledding was more her thing! |
Katie joined Nate and Laura in watching movies in the afternoon and I finally got to sit down and spend a little time relaxing!
The next day morning we watched the workers groom the slopes for the day as we ate breakfast. It was really an amazing operation! Several inches of snow fell overnight, and they had to use bulldozers to clear off the ski runs. After breakfast, Matt took Nathan and Laura skiing again.
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| Laura skiing |
They took the lift up the family ski slope and went down several times. Next Matt talked Nate into trying one of the beginner runs. It took about 45 minutes but they made it! The constant wind and snow made visibility pretty poor, so Nate decided he was done for the day. Matt decided to get a few more runs in before our afternoon bus to Sapporo and the kids and I went to explore the rest of the resort.
We got back to the ski cafeteria and few hours later and found Matt with a seriously injured arm. He tripped and fell forward onto his face and shoulder during his last ski run. His face must have hit powder, since he wasn't even bruised there, but his shoulder hit something hard and he was in serious pain. He refused to go to the first aid station and instead took lots of Advil and we caught the bus into Sapporo for the Snow Festival.
The Snow Festival was amazing. There were three different locations. The main location was a 12 block long park in the center of the city. We headed there as soon as we could. Despite our rush, it was dark by the time we got there. However, the sculptures were lit up at night and it was a really fun, festival atmosphere.
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| From the World of Dinosaurs block |
We went to the top of the Sapporo Tower to get an overview of the festival and then walked about 8 blocks.
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| View of the main venue of the Snow Festival from the Sapporo tower |
On every block were sculptures made of snow, performances (snow boarding, bands, etc.) and food stalls. We snacked as we walked along. After a few hours our toes were getting numb and the kids were getting crabby, so we headed back to the hotel.
The next morning we got up bright and early. We had brunch at the hotel and shipped our suitcases to the airport. This service is available all over Japan and is WONDERFUL for travelers - for $25 they take your bags to the airport and you don't have to worry about schlepping them around. You can even ship them all the way home if you want, but that is a bit more expensive. We checked out of the hotel and took the train to the second Snow Festival location. This location was down the middle of a street in a busy retail area. It was a 5 block long display of amazing ice sculptures.
Afterwards we had to stop at Starbucks and warm up with coffee/hot chocolate and chocolate chip cookies. Next we headed back to the primary festival area to see the last few blocks.
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| A replica of characters from a Japanese cartoon called Sazae-san. L and K are the two little figures in the bottom left! |
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| A snow version of the Temple of Heaven from China. It was huge, 1/2 the size of the real thing! |
This was actually my favorite part of the whole trip! There were ice slides, more performances on stages made of snow, a train ride and the international snow carving competition.
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| The "A-Z Dream" show that was playing on one of the snow stages. Teen girls acted out the various letters of the Roman alphabet. My girls LOVED it! |
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| Ice slide |
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| The cans of hot chocolate that warmed our hands, noses, bottoms and bellies and saved the trip! (L is sitting on one after going down the ice slide!) |
These snow sculptures from the international competition were amazing!
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| This is from the International Snow Sculpture Competition. They were still working on them when we went by. These were some of my favorite sculptures of the entire festival. This is from the China team. |
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| Indonesia - my absolute favorite! |
We decided to skip the third venue which focused on activities like snow boarding, sledding and skiing. When we finished looking at all the snow sculptures, we took the train to the airport, picked up our luggage and flew home. Matt had some difficulty driving home from the airport but he managed.
By the next day, Matt's arm looked very bruised and the pain was getting even worse so he went to an orthopedist who X-rayed his arm and discovered that he'd broken his upper arm, near the shoulder. He gave Matt a sling for his arm and referred him to an orthopedic surgeon. We saw the surgeon a few days later. He ordered a CT scan of the shoulder. Based on the results, he recommended that Matt keep the arm in a sling for 6 weeks to let the arm heal followed by physical therapy. This recommendation matched that of our neighbor in the States, who happens to be an orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports medicine (how crazy is that!) and was nice enough to review Matt's X-rays for us.
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| The crack is on the bottom of the of the shoulder It goes up rather than across.. It's more like a chip that isn't completely detached rather than a full break |
The arm isn't slowing Matt down much though. He's spending this weekend in Macau, China with some guy friends. Macau is the Las Vegas of Asia. I'm looking forward to hearing about the trip, and hoping we don't have to sell the house to cover his gambling debts! :)
