So as the winter snow and ice festivals come to an end all across Hokkaido, some friends and I decided to take a big road trip east to see one of the last ones still open.

We left around 6:30am and travelled through the morning until we reached Asahikawa, around 5hrs away. Here we stopped for lunch at one of the famous ramen stores and then got back on the road for a side trip, visiting a frozen waterfall and beautiful bridge, a frozen lake and a lone Christmas tree in a field. Weirdly these are star attractions of the area and had throngs of people from tour busses there to take photos.

From there we had to come back into Asahikawa and then on towards Sounkyo. We arrived at the Sounkyo Ice Waterfall Festival around 6pm and explored the beautiful structures made from frozen water dripped into all sorts of shapes and buildings before grabbing some food.

We had an hour until the fireworks and were cold and stiff from all day in the car so we took off up the nearby mountain to go to an onsen. The onsen overlooked the festival and we soaked in the hot waters and watched the fireworks from this amazing vantage. A big day was only getting bigger as we started the journey home. A total of around 22hrs as we arrived home exhausted close to 5am.