Yuki matsuri {Snow festival}

Although I'm not a big fan of cold weather (at all), I really enjoyed the snow festival that I went to with my host family.

I saw lots of families & adorable children in super cute snow suits :) and lots of really cool (err, cold) snow sculptures, including a stage made of snow...

Here are a couple of the snow sculptures...

Some of the snow sculptures became playgrounds...

There were also some pretty awesome ice sculptures...

Something I've never seen before:

A shrine made out of snow. Only in Japan.

There was also a row of little snow buildings (um, igloos?) with tables inside...

I looked inside to see people eating lunch.

My Japanese family.

They remembered my love for ice cream...

This picture proves that it's never too cold for (pear -- yum) ice cream!! :)