There was a lot of snow in Hokkaido. And it was VERY cold. Our first stop was Noboribetsu. After a night of minus 16 degrees, we went for a walk the next morning. Luckily the shop selling Kitty’s was nearby & warm.
Noboribetsu is an onsen town. That is, it has lots of hotels and lots of hot springs for you to bath in.They also have lots of depictions of Oni around the town. Oni are Japanese folklore demons and they hold large spiky clubs. Here, Kitty is pretending to be an Oni enjoying an onsen.

Also picked up snowboarding Kitty.

We then headed for the bright lights of Sapporo where the annual Yuki Matsuri was about to begin. It was cold. But it was amazing. Big sculptures made out of snow and ice an stuff. Really impressive. Really busy too. And the food was amazing. I’d pay a lot of money to have another scallop burger right now.
Anyway, this is Yuki Matsuri Kitty. Sadly it is the 60th Anniversary Kitty, when we were at the 61st Yuki Matsuri. Still, I’m sure it probably would’ve been much the same.

Next there is Snow Bunny Kitty. V. Cute. And this one comes with bonus snowflakes on the charm.

We took a day trip to Otaru (about 40 mins by train). They have their own Winter Festival where they light up snow lanterns all over the city. It’s really amazing and pretty. A real highlight of the whole trip, and some might say better than the Yuki Matsuri. However, they din’t really have any Otaru specific charms that I was happy with (most were the flat metal type) and I already have one of these from my last trip to Japan (to be featured in an upcoming post) so instead I got Ikura Kitty. Ikura is salmon roe, kinda like caviar I guess. It’s tasty stuff and it’s pretty much everywhere in Otaru. You can buy massive bowls of rice and ikura. So I thought it appropriate to buy this Kitty to remind me of my time in Otaru.

There’s a couple of zoo’s in Hokkaido. We didn’t go to any, but I am very disappointed we didn’t make the effort to go to Asahiyama zoo as the have  a penguin parade, complete with real penguins.  So, in lieu of not getting to see cute penguins waddle past me close up, I bought the Kitty Asahiyama Penguin.