Last week, we had two consecutive days off, which coincided with the Snow Festival at Asahikawa (the nearest city to us only 1 hour 15 mins away by train). We planned to head off in the morning, but fresh snowfall the night before led us to change our plan and instead go up the mountain for a few powder laps before heading off. We couldn’t resist!
While up the mountin, we bumped into our boss from last year, Jasun, which surprised us.
So we arrived in Asahikawa mid-afternoon just in time to see the free ice-skating rink in action and a few ice sculptures before dark. In fairness, we quickly realised that the ice sculptures looked even better in the evening with the changing coloured lights. There were at least 40 entries in the World Ice Sculpting Competition which led us all the way up the main shopping street to the main event held in a park.
We followed a candle lit pathway and saw a huge snow sculpture and stage which was absolutely massive and we came back for the evening entertainment. The event had been sponsored by Dragon Quest (we assume an online game) which in a way is sad that it has become commercialised but without commercial sponsors, events like this couldn’t take place and certainly wouldn’t be free to everyone.
First, we took a look around all the food stalls and may have partaken in a few delicacies, hot sake and hot mulled wine – it was absolutely freezing so some time in the heated “dining” portacabins was very welcomed. There was a huge snow maze, kids tubing and maybe 30 snow sculptures to look around at while a DJ entertained the crowd (first non-Japanese music at an event). Next was some modern ballet dancing on the main stage, then some sort of bear possibly slaying the dragon with a light show (all in Japanese). The finale was an amazing firework festival set to music. It was really impressive!
The next day we decided to do some shopping as we both desperately needed new snowboarding boots. We walked 20,000 steps around Asahikawa to three different shops finding what we needed in the last one.
We then had to get back to Furano with a big box of boots each, I had a box with a new helmet, our overnight bag and I had a bag of 6 huge apples that I saw for a super-cheap price since we arrived. Some out of season fruit and veg are incredibly expensive in Japan and apples have been over £2 each since we got here. To find huge ones costing just over 55 pence each was amazing.
Unfortunately, after stepping off the train and popping in our local Furano supermarket, we also saw individual apples for the same price – so I didn’t need to carry them all around all day with me – doh!
