Place local high school students in Odori Park with buckets of snow in the year 1950 and watch it snowball into the renowned Sapporo Yuki-matsuri, or the Sapporo Snow Festival. The festival and the efforts of those students have since gained international prominence with the first massive snow sculpture built by the Self Defense Force in 1955 and through the 1972 Winter Olympic Games hosted by Sapporo. Along with its growing popularity, the Sapporo Snow Festival has grown in the number of statues and sculptures (from six to somewhere in the hundreds), activities, and has expanded from occupying just the grounds of Odori Park to flooding the space of the Community Dome Tsudome and the main streets of Susukino.
In addition to the millions of tourists congregating in Sapporo during the week-long festival, artists, and possibly engineers, from all over the world flock there to free beautiful figures from their icy prisons. They combine art and engineering to create the most marvelous snow statues and ice sculptures. For seven days every year, Sapporo is transformed into a winter paradise that attracts people from snowy Sweden all the way to sunny Hawaii with its mesmerizing artworks.
For more information and pictures of Sapporo and the Snow Festival, please visit:
http://www.snowfes.com/english/ (offical site of the festival)
http://www.welcome.city.sapporo.jp/english/index.html (City of Sapporo)
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