Gifts I've Been Given - Snow Festival

This weekend I drank, went to a wedding, sang, drank some more, and went snowboarding so no posts were posted over the weekend, I'll just play catch-up a bit now.

Like I mentioned before when I went to the Snow Festival a bunch of elementary school kids wanted to ask questions to foreigners, and in return they wanted to give you some hand crafted welcome to Sapporo kinda gifts. It was adorable:


That's a few origami cranes (one only half finished, one on a ribbon) some hand-written letters and some maps of Chitose hand-made on computers and featuring some interesting design decisions:


When I think of Chitose outlet mall I certainly think of Abe Lincoln. And tiny blue and pink elephants coz they're on the TV ad. But mostly Abe Lincoln.

The hand written letters are all in Japanese, but it's super-simple kids Japanese so I can get the idea and Shino and Yuki read them out to me too. One is addressed to "Mr. or Mrs. Foreign Person" and one says "Maybe next time you can tell me your dreams!" which is just beyond cute.

I recall memories of scorching hot love, although I can not remember those scents now.

Omiyage are very important in Japan. Omiyage means, pretty much, souveniers and every time anyone goes anywhere they pick up some of the local specialties, sweets, biscuits or whatever, for the folks back home. It's a nice custom, and one that ensures you're seldom without some kind of ridiculously fancy baum cake or shortbread variation. I exaggerate, but only a little, and often so you should be used to it by now.

One of my friends recently came back from Tokyo where she used her impeccable taste to pick out a box of dano, which were really delicious sponge-cake things. Seriously, I can't over-estimate the massive range of this kind of thing that will confront you at most Japanese airports - it makes the tins of Dairy Milk that I remember at Birmingham look somewhat lacking.

Anyway you're the owner of one of these huge sweets companies and it's a homicidally competitive market so you've got to make your little cake things stand out from all the other little cake things. Word of mouth is important of course, but so is package design, and of course - copy:


Please click to embiggen and enjoy for yourself, but I'll type out the description from the box here for you're ease of reading. And please, this isn't to mock the English used to advertise the product, but to marvel at how insane their descriptions get.

Sweets scorched just a bit.

With dano's scorched cake in my hand, I can always relish a sweet breeze.
I recall memories of scorching hot love, although I can not remember those scents now.
The golden color is more beautiful than my baked skin in that memorial summer and eyes of a panda in midwinter.
This splendor and the scorching smell encompass the globe with a long jet stream.
In a few hours, my dear person will enjoy deep taste of dano with rich aroma of coffee or tea.
By the way, my share is secretly waiting for me in my bag. It also goes well with cloud colored milk.

dano's delicious stories will be born for each person who cram one's mouth with it.
Tonight, let's look up the starry sky and enjoy the scorched taste and moment.

Sapporo Snow Festival 2009

Of course I went down to the 60th annual Sapporo Snow Festival before work today. It was the first day and we were stopped four times by elementary school kids wanting to ask us questions for their English assignments. This happened last year too and it's awful cute, but this year came with the bonus of gifts from the kids. I got some letters (in Japanese), some origami cranes and some... frankly odd maps of Chitose that I'll write about some other time. I've never actually been to Chitose (just south of Sapporo, home of the airport and the outlet mall) so I reckon I'll probably use them sometime. There were indeed a lot of foreigners, so they had rich pickings.

It snowed heavily for most of the day too, and certainly while we were walking around. It makes for a nice Snow Festival atmosphere, but after a while you're getting wetter and wetter and it starts obscuring the statues. I guess they clean them up a bit at night? I certainly wasn't dressed for it as I was heading to work straight after, but it was worth it.


The big statue which was in this place last year, and which was in a similar style so I guess it was by the same team, was my favourite. This year it was probably my favourite again, I like the accuracy and the clean lines. Owls and Eagles - together at last.


Here are the pros going to work on the official competition blocks. These are the same two blocks I posted a picture of the other day, and I'll go back and check in a few days when they're done.


And this is the - frankly underdressed - Miss Hong Kong posing in front of the Hong Kong entry. Don't worry, she put her coat back on straight after the photo op.


And finally the humble offering I helped Jesi to make. I'm gonna go again!

Sapporo Snow Fesitval 2009 - Pre-Game

The 60th Sapporo Snow Festival kicks off tomorrow, and well, I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl. Here's some pre-festival snaps I took last weekend before I lent Jesi a hand.

Citizens statues by people from Sapporo

These big-ass blocks will be the international snow sculpture competitors' blocks.

The big statue in this spot was my favourite one last year.

Ah industrious people, freezing their fingers off.

Superman

Y'know like so many people, I never really liked Superman:


I guess it just takes the right story to show you why he's so awesome. For me that'll be Final Crisis by Grant Morrison.

Sapporo Snow Fesitval 2009 - Pitching In

Snow Festival starts on Thursday! Yeah! And just like last year Jesi managed to get a space for a small snow statue, and I went along to help out.


The small "citizens statues" are open to Sapporo residents but you have to enter a lottery to get a place. Jesi entered and got one of the 150 small blocks for the second time in two years! Way to go Jesi! This year she's making a tribute to the trash-ninjas of Sapporo. The trash-ninjas (as we call them) are a bunch of guys who dress up in old-fashioned clothes and go around town picking up litter and tossing it into bags on their backs and doing backflips and singing and dancing and stuff. They're on about the 11th level of awesome, so someone needed to pay tribute to them. In Jesi's statue there's a ninja and two samurai (what's the plural of samurai? samurais? samuraises?) around Sapporo's iconic TV Tower and bin at the bottom. She's still got one day to go, but it's looking good so far.

This year I worked on it a lot more than I did last year, meaning that I froze my ass off for longer than last year. It was really satisfying and rewarding though, and getting all bundled up and hacking away at a big lump of ice and snow with an axe seems like a great way to spend a weekend anyway. Jesi had a plan, and hers is looking way better than a lot of them, but some people - even though they're just regular Sapporo citizens - take it very seriously:


I think I saw those guys making a similarly perfect castle last year too. There are arsenals of tools laid out around some of them, and huge teams of people all chipping in all over the place. And when it comes to the big ones:


There are lots and lots of soldiers.

Sapica go!

Look what I got!


Babes and Bubbas, that is a Sapica - the new one touch Sapporo subway card scheme that was only started two days ago. Now that I've got one I'm just... I'm like so Sapporo. I'm cho Sapporo.

It's like the oyster in London, or the suica in London but on a much, much smaller scale. Seriously, Sapporo has regular train lines and bus routes which you can't use this on, and only three subway lines on which this is valid. You can't use it for anything else and really, the subway ticket system was pretty convenient already. So to be perfectly honest this isn't all that useful. Still never let it be said that I don't love a gimmick, and I can always hook it up to my credit card so that I never need to use a ticket machine again, or get my name printed on it or something. And now I think about it I do end up running for the train more often than you'd think so this might save me valuable microseconds.

And it's really, really cool too.

Today I ate a Sapporo Black Curry Burger, with a black curry sauce so black and sticky I thought I might be eating tar, or possibly Spider-man's alien costume. It was really nice.