A giant snow sculpture supported by Hokkaido Television Broadcasting representing a "kotankoro kamuy" (Blakiston's fish owl) watching over the National Ainu Museum, a soon to be opened centre for indigenous northern Japanese Ainu people, is seen after sundown during the Sapporo Snow Festival in Sapporo on February 4, 2020. The snow festival, which opened January 31 in the capital of Hokkaido in northern Japan, is a major draw for the region, attracting more than 2.7 million visitors last year. Organisers for this year's festival were forced to truck in an unprecedented amount of extra powder to build their signature sculptures after an unseasonably warm winter. CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP