At Lake Shikotsu, a caldera lake south of Sapporo that never freezes over, water is pumped from the lake and sprayed onto steel frames through the winter until it builds into translucent towers, tunnels and domes. The ice takes a deep blue from the lake's clarity, and at night the structures are lit from within.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass.
The method is the point: these are not carved, they are accreted, which means the festival requires weeks of sustained sub-zero weather before it opens and has been shortened in warm winters.
Chitose is where Sapporo's airport is, which makes this the first and last thing many visitors to Hokkaido see.
PlanningA late-January window, and entirely dependent on the cold — the structures are grown rather than carved.
Dates
Season
Computed from the recurrence rule we record for this entry, not copied from a listing. A date marked ~ comes from a calendar conversion and the observance may fall a day or two either side.
ConditionalDepends on sustained sub-zero temperatures; the sculptures are built from sprayed lake water.