The Sapporo Snow Festival is over! And yesterday, workers began destroying the huge snow sculptures with diggers.
For decades now, the Sapporo Snow Festival featured some truly impressive large-scale snow sculptures. And when the event is over, the organizers don't sit around and wait for them to melt.
In the video below, you can see yesterday's destruction:
Before the destruction begins, the Japanese Self Defense Force, which is brought in to destroy these things, purifies the sculptures with sake. You can see a bit of that in this 2011 clip:
Here is the One Piece sculpture being destroyed at the 2012 festival:
The Toriko sculpture from that same year:
The 2009 festival:
And now with sad music and snow head decapitation.
So brutal.
To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.
Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.