| In the coldest month of the year, the hottest ticket | | | | samurais, and dragons to contemporary athletes, ice |
| in Japan, and maybe the whole world, is for the | | | | maidens, political figures, and fifty-foot high |
| Sapporo Snow festival on Japan's northernmost island | | | | dinosaurs.the current Snow Festival is the descendant |
| of Hokkaido. More than 2,000,000 visitors from all | | | | of a way smaller 1950 festival, the effort of a group |
| over the world descend on. Hokkaido's capital to | | | | of Sapporo high school scholars who built six snow |
| watch it changed into the glittering, glittering, and | | | | statues in Odori Park and so impressed the park's |
| glistening arena of a cold fairyland. | | | | visitors the practice continued. Five years on, the |
| For a week each Feb, the skyscrapers of Sapporo | | | | Japan Self-Defense Forces housed at Makomanai |
| become upstaged by edifices and statues of frozen | | | | base introduced, as a training exercise, the technique |
| snow forming a second town in Odori Park and the | | | | for building the giant snow sculptures characteristic of |
| streets at their feet. Ice sculptures of the past have | | | | the Snow holiday today. |
| outlined everything from traditional japanese temples, | | | | |