Santa Claus Village
I got on a bus for Santa Claus village from here. The Santa Claus village is located in the suburbs of Rovaniemi city. It took about 30 minutes to get there from the city center of Rovaniemi. The buses for the Santa Claus village ran about every 1 hour so I recommend to you to check its timetable in advance. It was too hard to wait for a bus on the icy street....

Santa Claus village was established in 1985 and it became a world famouse tourist attraction. There was the Santa Claus Post Office, a reindeer farm, restaurants and lots of souvenir shops. The most popular attraction was the Santa Claus Office and the real Santa Claus lives there!

center:
Tokyo was 7360km away from here. It was so far...but I couldn't actually imagine "7360km".

right:
The village lays on the border line of the Arctic Circle. The left side of the line in the air was the Arctic Circle.

The building with the illuminated roof was the Santa Clause Office.

I heard that Santa Claus used to live at the North Pole. In 1925 he moved to Korvatunturi, which was on the border between Finland and Russia, about 300km north of Rovaniemi, because of the lack of food for his reindeer. And he still lives there...it is said.
The reason why he is at the Santa Claus village every day is because the roads between Korvatunturi and Rovaniemi are not maintained. It is too hard to go to see Santa Claus for people so he commutes to Rovaniemi to meet children and adults who still believe in him! As a result, the Santa Claus village in Rovaniemi has become one of the greatest resources for tourism, along with the northern lights and winter activities. About more than 5 hundred thousand tourists visit there from all around the world every years!! What a huge market!