Sapporo Snow Festival Sapporo

Sapporo Snow Festival Sapporo, Indian Bollywood style dancers perform in front of a large snow sculpture of India’s world heritage Taj Mahal at the opening of the annual snow festival in Sapporo, on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido on Feb 6, 2012.

The Sapporo Snow Festival, one of Japan’s largest winter events, opened on Monday. It will run till this Sunday.

Every winter, about two million people visit Sapporo to see the hundreds of snow statues and ice sculptures which line Odori Park, the grounds at Community Dome Tsudome, and the main street in Susukino.

Sapporo Snow Festival

Sapporo Snow Festival, A 61-year-old woman suffered a serious lower back injury when a snow sculpture at the annual Snow Festival here collapsed on Feb. 7, police said.

At around 4:20 p.m., emergency services were notified that one of the snow sculptures had collapsed and hit the woman.

According to officials with the festival’s organizing committee, the accident occurred when a 3-meter-tall snow sculpture of popular animated singing character “Hatsune Miku” suddenly crumbled and chunks hit the woman, who was standing nearby.

The woman, a visitor from Tochigi Prefecture, was with an elderly male companion, who noticed the sculpture was collapsing and tried to pull the woman away by the arm, but it was too late.

The injured woman was immediately taken to a local hospital for treatment, where examination confirmed she had a fractured vertebra.