Towada Lake Winter Festival (Continued)

And we're back! That's the shortest space between posts I think I've ever done. In any case, the last post was just getting impossible to add more pictures into, so continuing on where we left off from.....

Ice buildings! This is an incredibly angry samurai that was carved INTO THE WALL of an ice bar! It was so cool! I wanted to take a picture of the actual bar itself, but there were people drinking there, and I wasn't sure how they would feel about a random foreign woman snapping pictures of them while they are trying to drink their beer in peace. These next pictures, however, are the outside of the other ice bar, which was also a museum inside (it had some arts and crafts displayed on the walls).

And.... it's a Christian church. I don't think anyone explained to the Japanese that just because Christian churches have wine, doesn't mean you're supposed to get drunk inside of them. Oh well. This next picture is a close up of another ice sculpture, which you can see a bit in the picture above. It's two angel joining hands, if you can make that out past the blinding white light they were shining on it....

They also had a snow slide, which was awesome. I wanted to go on it, but two factors prevented me: one, it was mostly populated by children, and I didn't want to squish them, and two, it cost about 5 bucks to rent a little sled. No thank you. But I still took a picture of it, and wished fondly I was 8 years old and had $5 from my parents.


There were also fireworks planned for this evening, but Aaron and I couldn't justify waiting around for an hour before they were supposed to go on. So sadly, I do not have any fireworks pictures. What I do have, however, are pictures of the stage that groups later performed concerts on, and which would be the barrier protecting the crowd from the fireworks that would later shoot up behind it. Words can barely describe how cool this thing was. First of all, let me show it to you:

This picture is blurry, but I chose to include it because it illustrates a point for me; there are people in it for size comparison. This thing is made entirely of snow. Look at it in comparison to the people again, and then I will remind you, again, that it is made ENTIRELY out of snow. And yet, this does not even begin to cover the coolest parts of it. First:

it has a samurai carved into it. An angry samurai, which actually makes it just that much cooler. And then, most importantly, second:

it has a dragon carved into the left side of the stage. Let me reiterate this: IT HAS A DRAGON! Why? Because it's Japan, that's why, and Japan is awesome. Look forward to more posts soon! I forgot to mention in the previous post that April, despite being insanely busy, is also the time when the cherry blossoms bloom.... That should be happening next week, and you can bet I will have amazing pictures of them. For now, I hope you enjoyed looking at pictures of snow. I confess that I've had enough with snow this year. I should be ready again for more in about a year from now....