events
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First-time YOSAKOI Soran Grand Prize winner "Kita Subaru" dances The 31st YOSAKOI Soran Festival concluded after holding its final competition at Odori Park in Chuo-ku, Sapporo City on the final day of June 12. This festival was the first installment after a two...
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‘Umbrella Sky,’ an event in which people can enjoy pastel-colored plastic umbrellas displayed overhead, is being held at Tokachi Hills, a garden that is a tourist attraction in the town of Makubetsu in the Tokachi region of eastern Hokkaido. This is the second time it has been held, after last year’s inaugural event. The venue is decorated with 460 umbrellas in seven colors, including blue and orange; the number of umbrellas is 3.3 times that of last year, when 140 umbrellas were displayed.
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The 64th Sapporo Lilac Festival, a traditional early-summer event in Hokkaido’s main city of Sapporo, was held in Odori Park (Odori Nishi 5 and 6-chome) in Chuo-ku Sapporo City from May 18 to 29. It was the first time in three years that the festival was held at the venue. Approximately 400 purple and pink lilacs trees reached the peak of their blossoms during the festival, which bustled with local residents.
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"Down the Teshi" is one of Japan's largest canoe touring competitions, taking participants down the Teshio River. On April 2, the competition Executive Committee decided to hold this year's event on a 34-kilometer course between Nayoro and Bifuka on July 17. The competition has been cancelled for the past two consecutive years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be held with thorough COVID-19 measures and a reduction in both the schedule and scale.
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The Hokkaido Camping Car Festival 2022, featuring the latest campervans, was held in Sapporo on April 2-3. Approximately 100 vehicles were on display, including light, passenger vehicles and wagons that are easy to maneuver even for novice drivers, and visitors were able to compare the comfort and equipment of the vehicles. Held every year, this year was the 25th such event.
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An ‘Ice Fall Shrine’ ice sculpture has been established again this year at the site of the ‘47th Sounkyo Onsen Ice Fall Festival’ held at the Sounkyo hot-spring resort in the town of Kamikawa in northern Hokkaido, where visitors attached coins to a ‘sacred ball’ made of ice in the hope of bringing good luck.
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At the "Lake Shikaribetsu Kotan" event currently being held at Lake Shikaribetsu in the town of Shikaoi in the Eastern Hokkaido Tokachi region, a wedding ceremony was conducted atop the ice on February 11. The wedded couple professed their eternal love in an ice chapel made of ice and snow.
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On February 6, the ‘International Snow Shoveling Championship’ was held in the city of Shibetsu in northern Hokkaido, in which teams competed to dig-out balls – of five different colors – buried in the snow. The event was held as part of the 67th Shibetsu Snow Festival, which is being held on a reduced scale due to the continued spread of the COVID-19 virus. Forty people comprising eight teams from Shibetsu and Nayoro participated in the fiercely contested competition, which took place without spectators.
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‘Online Sapporo Snow Festival 2022,’ an alternative event to the Sapporo Snow Festival, which was cancelled for the second consecutive year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is being held from February 5 to 28. A video of the snow sculpting process is being broadcast, and virtual reality (VR) images of the snow sculptures are also being shown.
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The first Asahikawa round of the ‘Snow Duathlon Hokkaido 2022’ series of races – in which the times of cycle and cross-country skiing legs are combined to determine a winner – was held at the Tomisawa Cross-country Ski Course in the city of Asahikawa on January 30. Approximately 30 people competed in the races on the snow-covered field, to determine the first champion.