WORLD
Snow festival opened in Japan
Baku, February 7 (AZERTAC). Ice dinosaurs and a copy of the Chinese palace in height of 22 metres are presented at Snow festival which has opened on Monday in a Japanese city of Sapporo.
visitors also can see heroes of popular cartoon films and a musical "King-lion" - all about 250 big and small sculptures. The festival passes already in 62nd time and will last till next Sunday, informs ITAR-TASS.
within the limits of festival which annually involves to 2 million visitors, passes competition of the snow figures created by sculptors-fans from 16 countries. Russia is represented by three inhabitants of Novosibirsk - twin-cities of Sapporo. Their composition is called "the International hand shake" and symbolises unity of our world.
snow festivals in Sapporo, an administrative centre of the most northern Japanese island Hokkaido, are spent since 1950. Originally they have been conceived to distract from daily burdens of inhabitants of the country destroyed by the Second World War.
gradually festivals in Sapporo have got a world fame, now they involve a great number of foreign tourists. In building of especially large figures and compositions active participation is accepted by military men of Japanese armed forces who, in particular, are engaged podvozom "a building material" - snow.