This year’s Japan’s Sapporo Snow Festival (Sapporo Yuki Matsuri) will be held Feb. 4–11, 2019. During the week-long celebration, Hokkaido’s capital city of Sapporo will embrace winter with events and exhibitions that include amazing sculptures carved from ice and snow. Since its humble beginnings in 1950, when local high school students created several snow sculptures in Odori Park, the festival has become a worldwide attraction.

Events are held in three separate locations: Odori Site, Susukino Site and Tsu Dome Site. Odori Park is still the central location, with a collection of a dozen or so gigantic ice sculptures and around 100 smaller ones lit up daily until 10 p.m. Visitors also enjoy live music and other events, and climb the Sapporo TV Tower to view the exhibition from the tower’s observation deck.

At Susukino Site, in the city’s entertainment district one subway stop from Odori Park, another hundred lighted sculptures can be enjoyed. At Tsu Dome Site, visitors admire the sculptures and settle in for a day of fun on three different types of snow slides, or whizz across the snow on snow rafts. Food stands are open, along with staged events in the dome. The site is slightly beyond the city, but accessible by shuttle bus from Odori Site and Sapporo Station; and via subway from Sakaemachi Station.