Some time ago it was announced there would be a L'Arc-en-Ciel concert in the Tokyo National Stadium on the 21 and 22 of March! Unlike last time Michelle had a fan-club membership so we hoped that this time getting good tickets was a bit easier. Michelle entered the lottery via the Le-Ciel fan-club website for 2 tickets on January 15 and waited anxiously for the day of the results. We were very happy to receive the confirmation email on January 23 saying we won th...

On our last day we were not planning to sit still. We were happy to see the weather had cleared up for our last destination. After our nice breakfast, packing and checking out routine we went to the rope way that should bring us to Mount Moiwa for a nice view of Sapporo. To get there we had to take a rather unusual transportation method for Japan: a tram! It was also a nice way to see a little bit more of the snow covered streets of Sapporo. When we got to our st...

Today, the snow sculpture contestants had been judged and the one we thought best (two kirin, Chinese dragon lions) was number two! Only two? We couldn't find number one actually and had to look it up online. It turned out to be one of the dull ones (a globe with holes in it) but apparently was a favourite of the judges. We had no clue why though. We hadn't anticipated that visiting the yuki matsuri would take so few days but luckily there is plenty to do in Sap...

We had an earlier start today since we wanted to go to the special Snow Hatsune Miku shop that was open for only one day. But we first took a look again at the snow sculptures the contestants had finished since they would be judged today. 'Our' favourite still looked the best to us. Onwards to the Sapporo Factory Hall for Miku. We had visited the location before but then it was still empty. Now however, we were joining the Japanese favourite pass-time: standing ...

We checked in the morning how the competing snow-sculpture-groups were progressing. One day sure makes a difference. They are supposed to be finished on Saturday and most teams are starting to create the details of their work. We're curious who will win. We walked to the station in heavy snowfall and took the train to Otaru, a small city some 30 km away which has its own snow festival. The festival is completely different in setup though. No advertisements anyw...