Day 12 (Feb 8): Otaru 2 Part 3 - Glass Blowing

Location: Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan
Weather: -2 degrees + snow shower
Author: Amy

And we continue with more on the Otaru specialty... Kitaichi glass!

We went to the glass blowing factory and watched the specialists at work.

At the entrance of the glass blowing factory

Artist at work

Artist at work (camera without flash so as not to disturb the artist)

Artist at work. I think she was making snowmen

Another artist. This one specialises in glass trinkets like pendants, earrings, etc. You can see the coloured glass rods on her right and several finished products lined up on the table. See below...


Here's what Chrissie and I bought. Glass earrings and a pendant. We thought they were soooo sweet!

There were also some explanations in English on how glass products are made. Thought I would share them with everyone...

How to make line patterns by using glass parts.

How to make flower patterns

How to make glass animals

How to make glass animals



SPECIAL FEATURE!

Took us quite a bit of effort to take pictures of these GORGEOUS masks so I MUST show them. This was at a museum showcasing Venetian arts and crafts. The museum even had a real gondola in it, sitting on water. The second floor had an even grander gondola for royalty but we would have needed to pay an entrance fee, so we passed.

Beautiful Venetian ball masks

Beautiful Venetian ball masks. There were even more outstanding ones but we didn't take any pics.

What was interesting about this place is they take touristy potraits for you in Victorian era gowns. So it was quite amusing to see pics of Asian people in puffy ballgowns and men in tights...

At that brings us to the end of our Otaru visit!

Overall, we really enjoyed ourselves in Otaru, eventhough it was pretty cold. When we got back to Sapporo, we went to Coco Ichiban Curry House and had dinner. Want to see?

Chrissie's chicken katsu curry rice

Amy's pork curry rice

Interlude - A little history lesson on music boxes

Just thought this might be interesting for some of you guys. In one of the music box museums we went to, there was a history of music boxes from the 1600's to the 1900's. I found it pretty interesting myself.

Apologies for the blur pics...

Day 11 (Feb 7th) - Yuki Matsuri at Odori Koen

Location: Sapporo
Weather: Cold, -2 deg
Author: Chrissie

Hi all, today's post is all about the Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival) in Odori Park. The festival is probably one of the main reasons why we decided to spend our 2 weeks holiday in Hokkaido!!

A little extra information. Although many cities/towns in Hokkaido hold their own version of the snow festival, the most famous and biggest winter festival is the one held in Sapporo. It is basically a week long festival held in 3 different locations in Sapporo - Odori Park, Susukino and Tsudomu.

Odori Park lies roughly in the heart of Sapporo city, about a 10 minute walk from the Sapporo train station and we walk past it almost every day on our way to the station. It's a pretty big park with an eiffle tower lookalike (the Sapporo TV tower) bordering one end of the Park. Pictures of the tv tower will come in a later post. This year the festival started on Feb 5th and because we had arrived in Sapporo about a week earlier, we had the opportunity to see the sculptors and event organizers hard at work in preparation for the opening.

During the early days of our arrival, many of the sculptures had not yet been created. The bigger sculptures were already being worked on, but Odori Park at the time basically resembled a construction site with lots of workmen, scaffolding, blue tarp and safety barriers everywhere and the park was closed to visitors. A couple of days before the opening of the festival, we started noticing quite a number of foreigners and tourists out and about town.

We decided to head to Odori park on the 3rd day of the festival! We'd been hearing lots of music and noises coming from it the past couple of days, and I'd been watching a lot of tv programs covering the festival and especially on the food we could get there!!

We found out the festival at Odori Park mostly showcases the snow sculptures created by both local as well as international artists. In addition there were a great many different events held in the park like concerts, talent shows, snowboarding competitions as well as LOTS and LOTS of food stalls and cultural and gift shops.

The park was extremely crowded when we arrived, especially around the food stalls!! Obviously everyone had the same idea as us. The organizers had actually created a one-way walking route around the park, I think so that the chaos of people traffic could be kept in order. Amy and I didn't know this initially and found ourselves fighting against a great sea of people. We almost didn't make it out alive!

Anyhow, once we figured out the system, we started taking a 'leisurely' stroll around and the pictures below are some of the interesting things we saw.

Amy had to take a picture of this shop which was all about Bae Yong Jun, a Korean actor who is idolized and adored by the aunties of Asia due to the many famous dramas he's acted in. He is now REALLY big in Japan.

The picture's not very good, but in the background is a large snow sculpture which I later found out from tv was created by school kids. There are various animals in the sculpture - a bear, monkey, seal...can you spot them?

A really impressive gigantic snow sculpture of a large eagle and owl protecting their offspring!

An artist hard at work on his bull sculpture.

A pair of sculptors doing the finishing touches on their 'dragon and man' workpiece. The characters are probably based on some Asian mythology but I unfortunately don't know very much about Asian legends. Can anyone enlighten me?!

The sculpture representing Malaysia in the Festival. It made Amy feel very patriotic!

The sculpture representing Sweden!

...and of course Singapore's entry for the festival!

There were a great many international food stalls as well. This is a picture of the Australian food stall. Guess what kind of food is considered Australian? Steak, roast beef and steak hamburgers!!

Of course, we were only interested in Japanese snacks! These are stalls for Crepes, ChocoBanana, Takoyaki, Sausages, Yakiniku, sweet buns...etc.

After walking around and inhaling the various aromas, we got hungry! Here's me paying for the Takoyaki!!

Eagerly grabbing the Takoyaki!

Got it!! Time to dig in!

The steaming hot Takoyaki!

Amy also bought a Yakitori (Grilled Chicken) stick

Bon Apetit!

I was kind enough to share my prize!

Happy from our snacking, we decided to checkout some snowboarding action.

Another snowboarder in mid-air!

The snow sculpture right next to the snowboard competition. The detail was amazing!

These were skiers smoothing out the snow on the ski slope for the snowboard competition.

Another very impressive snow sculpture monument sitting between the Japanese and South Korean flags.

We obviously got hungry again! Hokkaido is known for its very fresh seafood. There were a lot of stalls selling fresh crab and crab manjyu (bao or dumpling) which I ended up getting. Here's Amy preparing to crack open a giant crab claw.

The shell was surprisingly soft. The crab meat was extremely fresh, juicy and sweet! Yum!!

Aside from the snow sculptures was this beautiful ice sculpture! The 2 guys on the stage were comedians I think.

Another colourful Hello Kitty! stall.

There were a lot of snow sculptures representing cartoon and cute animation characters in the Park although we didn't take any pictures of them! This one I took because I love Disneyland!

On the way home. A view of the main street showing the various lighted decorations along the avenue.

I will be putting up pictures of the Yuki Matsuri in Susukino in a later post! It's a little different as the ones in Susukino are all ice sculptures as opposed to snow sculptures! Until next time! mata ne!