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 Sapporo. One of the surprising locations is the Chocolate Factory, also called the Shiroi Koibito Park. It is a real factory for chocolate cookies but the owners surely like children since they turned it into something alike a themepark. We were regularly reminded of the Efteling (themepark in Holland). Already on the outside of the building this could be seen by all the little details like cat decorations on top of the fences, comically moving machinery and small snowmans in front of most windows. It didn't look like a factory and had a Victorian style air. Inside this was even more prominent with large entrances, high ceilings and typical woodwork. The park started with some history by showing packages and chocolate boxes from the 1850's to 1980's. Not only from its own brand but also others like Van Houten (a Dutch brand of chocolate makers that is not so famous in Holland but can be seen everywhere in Japan). Quite a difference with today's packaging. They did not skip the colonial part by clearly including black workers and kitchen staff in their work clothes, though there were enough white ones as well. They decorated the windows outside as well, as bakers or musicians. Somewhat surprisingly, no Asian looking people.

The Chocolate Time Tunnel explained how chocolate was made in the old days with toy scenery and videos that had English subtitles. We actually learned something ;) All other information boards were Japanese only though. The only thing they didn't explain was how they extract the white chocolate butter from the brown chocolate mass. The factory was operating when we visited and you could see how the just explained process works with modern equipment. We were surprised how much was checked by hand and removed from the production line manually. And, really surprising, all packaged cookies were checked by an X-ray!

For all the patissiers in the making, it is possible to do your own baking there as well with sugarcraft, chocolate decoration and cookie baking workshops. They displayed some of their works which were of course very nice and detailed. The park has a cafe as well of course where you can try out their cupcakes, cakes, chocolate milk and ice cream. We had to wait for a while to get seats, since we wanted those next to the window. From there we had a very nice view over the city, could see the rose garden (snow garden in winter with snow slides) of the park and watch the animated clock tower. Every hour the clock tower showed a long animation with huge puppets performing a whole scenario. We watched it while enjoying our chocolate milk. We tried both the flavours they had. The brown one was rather normal, but the white one was better and you could add some strawberry sauce to it. We didn't expect that the strawberries would make the white chocolate taste better, but it sure did!

The next part was called the Tudor House which was more a showcase of what the owners had been collecting over the years than related to chocolate. There were old gramophone players on display, from the very first inventions to the early jukeboxes, and a special sound room where a lady would operate some of them from time to time. It sounded just like you would expect. Music from the 20's and 30's with an old, nostalgic sound. This was followed by several rooms with all kinds of old toys. Some of them of the new, plastic kind, but most of them were from before that. Rows and rows of dolls, figures, cars and airplanes. This part didn't feel like a museum, but as if the grandchildren had opened up the attic, found out that grandpa was an avid collector and decided to dump it here. Many Japanese were inspecting a lot of the stuff but we just zipped by in a minute. At the end of the route you could buy omiyage (boxes of cookies or chocolate that you take back to family and work after a holiday) of all the products they made. We bought some too, of course. Very nice cookies, so nice we even bought another box when we were back in Tokyo. Amazon sells everything. They also had a candy factory where they showed you how they make hard licorice candy with small figures 'drawn' in them (various fruits, text, anything is possible). We had already seen three of those shops in Tokyo, so not that interesting anymore, but still nice to see.

It was already running late, but we still decided to go to Tsudome. That was another site of the Snow Festival, but more targeted for children to play. We were too late actually since they had just closed for the day when we arrived. Still, we could see that it was a huge area with most of it covered with snow slides. So we went back again. After dinner, we took our last trip along the Odori with the huge snow sculptures.

We wanted to capture the projections they did on some of them and luckily enough we arrived just in time. On the Indonesian temple/castle they showed a movie that matched the shape of the building exactly, with the windows lighting up and the tower being used for a phoenix landing. Very nicely done, really impressive. The ice building had a podium and when we got there a band was just starting to play. They made nice rock music and one amusing grandpa at the front was continuously 'singing' along, making headbang movements and was enjoying himself immensely. He was more fun to watch than the band itself ;) We assumed they don't invite just any band to play on the snow podium and this band had gathered some girl groupies of course. We had no clue what he was shouting at one time, but the fans all went down on one knee, waiting for the signal and then started to run in a large circle in front of the podium. Apparently, that's a "circle pit". During the concert he was slowly taking off some of his clothes until he was singing bare-chested. At the end he took a bucket of water and emptied it on his head! In minus 10 degrees! Cool way to end the concert.