The Sapporo Snow Festival, one of Japan's largest winter events, attracts a growing number of visitors from Japan and abroad every year. Every winter, about two million people come to Sapporo to see a large number of splendid snow and ice sculptures lining Odori Park, the grounds at Tsudome, and along the main street in Susukino.
For seven days in February, Sapporo is turned into a winter dreamland of crystal-like ice and white snow. The Snow Festival began in 1950, with six snow statues made by local high school students in Odori Park. In 1955, the Self-Defense Force joined in and made a massive snow sculpture, the kind for which the Snow Festival is now famous for. The Festival has grown from a humble beginning to become one of the biggest and most well known winter events. The Snow Festival is considered to be a festival of international-caliber.