Smoke on the Water, Japanese Style

"From the 250th anniversary celebration of the Great Fire of Edo (Edo is
the traditional name of Tokyo) … one of many, but the most
destructive, held along with the Great Eruption of Fuji-san 300th
Anniversary. This is the Kabuki-za orchestra and readers along with
part of the Suntory Hall Orchestra, which occasionally features the
Crown Prince on viola (but not in this one)."

From Japan Probe via Tim Bray on Twitter.

Sapporo Snow Festival

It seems mandatory that I blog about Japan's Snowman Competition. To be exact, it's the 59th Sapporo Snow Festival. It's a pretty serious festival, judging from the site maps (Odori site and Satoland site). They have slides, a snowball fight demonstration, build your own snowman, snow rafting and even a labyrinth. And there's an ice festival as well.

You can check out pictures and explanations [festival site] of the major sculptures from the Odori site. In addition, this search on flickr will give some great image results. The overhead shot from Keith Yeung is very impressive and gives you a wonderful sense of the festival's scale.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go and train my army of snowmen.