Minus ten degrees, and the whole park is sculpture

The feathers on that eagle to the left are so fine they make you doubt it is a sculpture at all. Step close, reach out — cold, snow: some team spent weeks carving it stroke by stroke out of dozens of tonnes of it, then left, leaving the work in place for the minus-ten air to wear slowly smooth. At February's Sapporo Snow Festival, Odori Park stretches over a kilometre east to west, a large work every few steps — buildings, beasts, cartoon characters, abstract installations, some taller than two storeys. You cannot see them all at once, only keep walking on.

This festival grew out of something very small. In 1950 a few local middle-school students built six snow statues in Odori Park; to their surprise it drew crowds, and the second year, the third, it could not be stopped — over seventy years on it became an event with international teams competing and the Self-Defence Forces called in to help build the great statues. These behemoths before you trace back to a few children, one winter, wanting to make something with their hands.

By day you see the detail of the sculptures; once lit at night, what you see is the texture of light falling on snow — blue and orange turning snow into another substance, some works more breathtaking under the lights than by day, worth walking the route again after dark. That day I walked it twice with my daughter, once by day, once by night, and she said it was like seeing two different parks. Our trips, mother and daughter, have always been just the two of us; this — one road walked twice, yet showing two different views — is rather a picture of these years of ours.

The Odori Park grounds are free; walk a little south and Susukino has clear ice carvings glinting coldly under the lights; out in the suburbs Makomanai is emptier still, the snow crunching underfoot, your own footsteps audible. Beside one great snow statue a worker was patching, with a small trowel, an edge the day's sun had slumped, his movements light, as if tending something he knew could not be kept. My daughter watched a long while, then looked up and asked, "Will it melt?" I said yes. She said nothing more, only looked at the statue once again.

On the festival's last night, mother and daughter walked Odori Park once more. The snow at the melting edges looked especially gentle under the lights; my daughter was a little reluctant — but they were never made to last. The snow crunched underfoot on the way back, the streetlamps stretching our two shadows long and short, swaying one ahead of the other. Her small hand was in my pocket, mine holding hers, both still warm.

That eagle still glowed behind us, cold and faint. My daughter was already asking whether we could come back next February. I didn't answer at once, only held her hand a little tighter. Most of the road these years I have led her along alone; but some views you must see together to have truly seen — a city destined to melt, say, and a mother and daughter, at minus ten degrees, on the night they could not bear to let it melt.