北海道の雪祭り （Snow festivals in Hokkaido) : 小樽の午後

En français
I then took the train to 小樽, I wanted to see the illumination by the canal but it only started at 5pm so I still had 4 hours left before. I walked around a bit and almost got frozen to death in a small snow storm before deciding to find a nice warm place in a café to get some nice warm food and drink before going to the event.
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北海道の雪祭り （Snow festivals in Hokkaido) : random walk in 札幌

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The next day I had time before going to 小樽, knowing that the show there was only starting at 5pm and that I was already way to early there. So in the morning, I went back to the 雪祭り and then randomly wondered around in 札幌 and got delicious see food.
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北海道の雪祭り （Snow festivals in Hokkaido) : 旭川の雪祭り 雪

En français
The largest street in 旭川　was really filled with snow. I took it to go to the park where was held the second part of the 雪祭り。The snow sculptures were situated near the river. The first one was the largest stage of all, largest than the stage in 札幌　and was representing the transformers. The other sculptures were smaller and place in front of the restaurant so that you could look at them while eating. On the other side there was a Ice Village which was a large igloo with an ice bar.
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北海道の雪祭り （Snow festivals in Hokkaido) : 旭川の雪祭り 氷

En français
When I came back from the zoo, I went to see the 雪祭りunfortunately it was a little early and my camera's battery finally died before I could take pictures of the illuminations. The first part of the 雪祭り was on the street in front of the station and was the presentation of ice sculpture. They were even more impressive than the one in 札幌。
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北海道の雪祭り （Snow festivals in Hokkaido) : 旭川動物園

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The next day I got up early to go to 旭川 it takes almost two hours by train to get there. The thing I liked in 北海道 is that no matter where I wanted to go, I didn't have to transit. I took a direct train to 旭川駅。Then I was a bit lost arrived there, I needed to find the bus stop number 5 to get to the zoo, but I didn't want to go wondering too much out of the station in the wrong direction in the snow. Hopefully the Japanese tourist information was really helpful, the woman there gave me a time table of the bus departure to the zoo and to come back and showed me exactly where the bus station was. It was funny to speak in Japanese when she was answering in English to me. I took the bus to the zoo, it takes about 40 minutes to get there. It was starting to snow while we were waiting. A lot of people had decided to go to the zoo too. 旭川動物園　is one of the most famous zoo in Japan, it's not very big but it has winter animals such as polar bear, penguins and an arctic fox. And the very special penguin walk activity. My camera's battery got frozen during this but I still managed to get awesome pictures.
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北海道の雪祭り （Snow festivals in Hokkaido) : 札幌のすすきの

En français
After 大通 I went to すすきの。The 雪祭り　there was made of ice sculpture. I had the chance to see some people working on the sculpture too. The ice sculptures are thin and filled with a lot of details compare to the huge snow sculptures. It was really contrasting. It seems to be easier to get things prisoners in the ice and then to sculpt it to give a given effect. There was bottles from sponsors inside of some, event crabs and other seafood, or flowers.
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