Sapporo Snow Festival, Japan

Another snowy view, this time from Japan.

The Sapporo Snow Festival is a festival held annually in Sapporo, Japan, over seven days in February. Odori Park, Susukino, and Tsudome are the main sites of the festival. The 2014 Snow Festival dates are 5 to 11 February.

The festival is one of Japan's largest and most distinctive winter events. In 2007 (58th Festival), about two million people visited Sapporo to see the hundreds of snow statues and ice sculptures at the Odori Park and Susukino sites, in central Sapporo, and at the Satoland site. An International Snow Sculpture Contest has been held at the Odori Park site since 1974, and 14 teams from various regions of the world participated in 2008. The subject of the statues varies and often features an event, famous building or person from the previous year.

The Snow Festival began in 1950, when six local high school students built six snow statues in Odori Park. In 1955, the Japan Self-Defense Forces from the nearby Makomanai base joined in and built the first massive snow sculptures, for which the Snow Festival has now become famous. Several snow festivals existed in Sapporo prior to the Sapporo Snow Festival, however, all of these were suspended during World War II.

Åland

A lovely snowy view of Åland I received from a swap last year.

I have no idea where exactly in Åland this place is, there is no information on the card. It does look like it's a seashore, though - those houses/sheds look so much like the ones in the Astrid Lindgren's 'Vi på Saltkråkan' tv series that I used to love when I was a kid (well, I still really like it and wouldn't mind having it on dvd). If you want to read more about the series, check Wikipedia. There might be some clips on youtube as well, I haven't checked though and they would most likely be in Swedish... Speaking of snow, we haven't actually had ANY over here so far this winter! I don't mind in the least as everything always turns into chaos when it snows here. :P Still, it does look pretty.

Udachny, Sakha Republic, Russia

Another snowy view, this time from Russia. This picture was taken in April, brrrr!

Udachny is a town in Mirninsky District of the Sakha Republic, Russia, located 1,370 kilometers northwest of Yakutsk on the Markha River. It has a population of 12,611 (2010 Census preliminary results).

The Sakha (Yakutia) Republic is a federal subject of Russia. Comprising half of the Far Eastern Federal District, it is the largest subnational governing body by area in the world at 3,083,523 square kilometers and the eighth largest territory in the world, if the federal subjects of Russia were compared with other countries. It is larger than Argentina and just smaller than India which covers an area of 3,287,240 km2. It has a population of fewer than one million inhabitants. Its capital is the city of Yakutsk.

The Sakha Republic is one of the ten autonomous Turkic Republics within the Russian Federation. Yakutia also fosters close cultural, political, economic and industrial relations with the independent Turkic states through membership in organizations such as the Turkic Council and the Joint Administration of Turkic Arts and Culture.

I received this card from a swap with Jaroslav who lives in Moldova, hence the Moldovian stamps.

Lappeenranta, Finland

Uh oh.. long time no see. I didn't realise it's been *that* long since I last updated this blog. I don't want to go into details here, let me just say that I haven't really been in the mood for updating this, or doing many other things. I haven't actually sent that many postcards in the past few months, either.. :/ ...and now Christmas is almost here (again)! I'm not very much in a festive mood at the moment and it's not helped by the fact that it's been raining so much for the past few days, and it looks like it's going to be the same over Christmas. I don't normally like snow all that much but it does make the scenery more Christmas-y. :P Therefore I thought I'd post a couple of snowy views of my old hometown Lappeenranta in Finland.

These are actually both Christmas postcards, issued by the local energy company. You couldn't really tell, though, they are REALLY nice. The top one was sent to me and Matt's family by my parents a couple (?) of years ago and shows a view of the harbour, one of my favourite places in the town. The card on the bottom, then, was an official I received in 2009 from a Postcrosser who lives in Lappeenranta! I love coincidences like that :D The picture is from the old fortress, another favourite place of mine and perfect for sliding down the hills with a big bin bag in winters :D (We did that when Matt's family came over some years ago for a visit, hehe.)

Cambridge, England

This week has been really cold over here. Today's been the worst so far - this morning it was only +9 C in my bedroom! I've got the little heater on but I still feel like an icicle, and my fingers are pretty stiff. Fun time typing... :p We haven't had any snow in this area so far, but might get some this weekend. I hope the weather reports are wrong. :/ I don't like it when everything stops thanks to half an inch of snow, and also because our house is so stupidly cold. I should probably move to the front room where it's nice and warm as the fire's on in the fireplace. ...but then I can't DO anything, grrr.

Anyway, I thought this postcard would be fitting for now. You don't usually get scenes like this in this country, it only snows a couple of times a year on average. It's pretty but sooo inconvenient.



Snow aside this is a very typical view in Cambridge. There are bicylcles EVERYWHERE, I remember that from when I visited there some years ago. Jacqueline who sent me this card explains that there are very few places to park a car, so bicycles are an ideal means of transport. They are also fairly cheap for students to use. ...I guess it's also safer to cycle in Cambridge than in the West Midlands. I wouldn't risk using a bicycle over here, there's way too much traffic over here and I wouldn't trust drivers to be careful enough. It's a shame because it would be a great way to get some exercise too, but what can you do. *sigh*

Cambridge is also very topical to me at the moment in a different way... That is, because of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie who went to university there. They were on tv yesterday, together for the first time in 15 years! There's more about Fry And Laurie Reunited here if you're interested and want to watch clips of the program. It was excellent, SO good to see them together again! Hehe, and now I really want to rewatch 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie' :D







I love this year's Christmas stamps in the UK. Wallace & Gromit! It's just a shame they have to be so small.