There’s another aspect to the Sapporo Snow Festival, the Ice Festival in Susukino (which bizarrely translates as “Zebra Grass Fields” – go figure) the red-light district of Sapporo, one of the largest of its kind in all of Japan (again, go figure!) far away from kid-friendly Odori Park with its cutesy-pie Anime snow sculptures.

Susukino is where the seedy underbelly of this city rises to the surface after dark. However, we were there late morning in the midst of a snow blizzard, so not only were the crowds down, but the shady side of this district was nowhere to be seen. I believe you need to come here at night to experience the grubbier side of Sapporo, but I think we’ll leave that experience for another time. It’s a built-up sky-scraper side of this city. No parks, more blazing flashing billboards, large department stores and heaving crowds, so I guess, much like any other downtown city area of Japan. 

It had been snowing all morning, but as we emerged from the underground network of streets, we were met with intense thick swirling snow. Exciting! Because here in Susukino there was also an impressive show of intricately carved ice sculptures, some so finely carved it beggars belief how they achieve such detail. It’s a competition, but not by country as per the Snow Festival but by individual artist. However, to pick a winner out of these wonderous carvings would be a hard task. The Grand Prize for 2025 went to the Marlin Ice Sculpture, a stunning worthy winner (even if we couldn’t identify who the individual artist was). 

We walked one side of the blocked off streets as far as the festival reached, turned around and came down the other side, but it was half way down when the weather turned decidedly ugly. Not sure what you call this weather event. The weather app tells me it’s ‘Thundersnow’ but in reality what we experienced was a sudden and dramatic change, from fluffy blizzard snow to dark brooding clouds and an intense ice-crystal downpour. So forceful that we had to run from the street down into the underworld of Sapporo, the vast network of shopping streets below the surface – safe and warm, comfortable shopping amongst the throngs of people you now realise are down here for a reason, and not in the hostile streets above.