Sapporo, the city where we live, is famous for several things: the Winter Olympics in 1972, the annual snow festival, delicious ramen (a large bowl of noodles with meat and vegetables in a soup) and Sapporo beer to name a few. It also has the distinction of being the snowiest major (i.e. population of over 1,000,000) city in the world with several metres of it falling every winter between about December and March. Living in a city set up for snow is great. Come October people tie up the plants and bushes in their gardens to protect the branches from the weight of the snow. Special shovels of all shapes and sizes are sold in the shops. Cars change their tyres to winter ones with a thicker tread and don special windscreen wipers.
On a snowy morning everyone gets up a little earlier and goes outside to clear their car and the pavement area in front of their house. People then get to work earlier to help clear the areas there too. "Snow moving" becomes a major focus for the city authorities. An everyday sight is lorries full of snow driving to one of the dumping grounds. One place is beside the main river where tons of snow are dumped and then in spring gradually put into the river. There are other empty plots of ground which gradually become filled with snow mountains too.
Driving is an interesting experience. The roads are not salted, nor are they cleared as such. Rather the snow is flattened down so that you are driving on top of the snow and ice. On a warmer day though this might melt a little and then freeze again, likening driving conditions to a rally driver. 2 lane roads become one as snow is piled up at the side, and pedestrians are often found walking down the roads as the pavements may be impassable.
Schools build their own snow mountains in the playground where they teach beginner skiing, with the older children being taken to local ski slopes for lessons as part of PE. This mountain is also great for sledging with homemade sledges consisting of a cushion taped inside a 10kg empty rice bag.
And the snow is beautiful. On a sunny morning it sparkles as if with diamonds, sometimes almost too bright to look at - a great reminder of the promise that we will be washed "whiter than snow".
On a snowy morning everyone gets up a little earlier and goes outside to clear their car and the pavement area in front of their house. People then get to work earlier to help clear the areas there too. "Snow moving" becomes a major focus for the city authorities. An everyday sight is lorries full of snow driving to one of the dumping grounds. One place is beside the main river where tons of snow are dumped and then in spring gradually put into the river. There are other empty plots of ground which gradually become filled with snow mountains too.
Driving is an interesting experience. The roads are not salted, nor are they cleared as such. Rather the snow is flattened down so that you are driving on top of the snow and ice. On a warmer day though this might melt a little and then freeze again, likening driving conditions to a rally driver. 2 lane roads become one as snow is piled up at the side, and pedestrians are often found walking down the roads as the pavements may be impassable.
Schools build their own snow mountains in the playground where they teach beginner skiing, with the older children being taken to local ski slopes for lessons as part of PE. This mountain is also great for sledging with homemade sledges consisting of a cushion taped inside a 10kg empty rice bag.
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| 1st graders learning to ski in the school playground |
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| One of the displays at the Sapporo Snow Festival |
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