Whilst The UK And Most Of Europe Is Still Suffering From

the worst downfall of snow in years,

and I am daily being asked by Diana if we can go and see it,

in Sapporo, Japan the locals and many teams from abroad have a different take on the snowfall, it attracts a growing number of visitors from Japan and abroad every year as teams compete to make an award winning ice sculpture,

every winter, about two million people come to Sapporo to see the hundreds of beautiful snow statues and ice sculptures which line Odori Park,the grounds at Satoland, and the main street in Susukino,

the Snow Festival began in 1950, when local high school students built six snow statues in Odori Park in 1955,

it has even began to be a show case for aspiring pop groups, hopefully things in europe will have started to return to normal by now, well Network Rail is as director of operations and customer services Robin Gisby reassured rush hour train travellers this morning, 'we're fully open for business.'

speaking on BBC Radio Four's flagship 'Today' programme, Mr Gisby repeatedly insisted that the rail network was 'open for business' and 'working well.' the quoted line was ''We're fully open this morning, it's snowing at the moment, but we are fully open for business, we're fully open and working well," in case listeners did not fully get the message, he repeated: 'We're open for business today right across the network, we're planning to run a pretty good service,' perhaps other rail companies should head hunt him to get their rail network running as efficiently, or do I mean his commuters should head hunt him?