Photo/Illutration A model of a large snow sculpture featuring the new Es Con Field baseball park and Tsuyoshi Shinjo, manager of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters (Kaede Sano)

SAPPORO--Designs for large-scale sculptures that will feature at the Sapporo Snow Festival to be held Feb. 4-11 include a plant-eating dinosaur and a mockup of the new home turf of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters baseball team.

The festival, the 73rd, will be held on-site for the first time in three years due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The festival’s executive committee said 106 snow sculptures are planned, including five massive ones, and 60 ice sculptures set up at the main venue in Odori Koen park and one in the Susukino entertainment district.

The main sculptures include the Hoheikan, a building that opened in 1881 and is designated by the central government as an important cultural property. The scaled down version will stand 10.6 meters tall, 22 meters wide and 19 meters deep.

The snow sculpture of the Es Con Field, the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters’ new home turf which will open in Kita-Hiroshima in March, will also be created, along with one of team manager Tsuyoshi Shinjo.

Another sculpture is themed on Kamuysaurus japonicus, a new plant-eating dinosaur whose fossils were found in Mukawa.

The city’s annual winter tradition was held online for the past two years due to the pandemic.

In 2019, before the pandemic started, the festival attracted a total of 2.73 million visitors.

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