{"id":16689,"date":"2011-02-08T12:04:09","date_gmt":"2011-02-08T16:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=16689"},"modified":"2011-02-08T12:05:19","modified_gmt":"2011-02-08T16:05:19","slug":"wit-life-153-sapporo-snow-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/08\/wit-life-153-sapporo-snow-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #153: Sapporo Snow Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/category\/category\/wit-life\/\"><em><strong>WITLife<\/strong><\/em><\/a><em><strong> is a periodic series written<\/strong><\/em><em><strong> by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stacysmith.webs.com\/\"><strong>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em><em><strong>(Kumamo<\/strong><\/em><em><strong>to-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts<\/strong><\/em><em><strong> her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shar<\/strong><\/em><em><strong>es s<\/strong><\/em><em><strong>ome of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.<\/strong><\/em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.h7.dion.ne.jp\/~ww99\/today\/20050213.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"285\" height=\"263\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The snow here in NYC that we have received in abundance this year is pretty as it&#8217;s coming down, but it soon turns into dirty mush or slush beneath our feet.\u00a0 For those looking to enjoy more pristine snow-covered landscapes, look no further than Sapporo&#8217;s \u96ea\u796d\u308a (<em>yuki matsuri)<\/em> or Snow Festival.\u00a0 Held every February in Hokkaido&#8217;s capital, this hugely popular week-long event brings in 2.5 million visitors and features perennial favorites as well as new sculptures each year.\u00a0 It began in 1950 when local high school students built six snow statues in Odori Park, and five years later the \u81ea\u885b\u968a (<em>jieitai<\/em>) or Self-Defense Forces joined in and made the first of the colossal sculptures for which the festival is now known.\u00a0 For those of us not lucky enough to be able to see the works in person, please enjoy them virtually with the following video of this year&#8217;s festival which began yesterday.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=l7LrSKc39Oc&amp;feature=player_embedded\">Sapporo Snow Festival<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. The snow here in NYC that we have received in abundance this year is pretty [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,18,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-4lb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16689"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16695,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16689\/revisions\/16695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}