Tokamachi Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival)

This weekends adventure took us to Tokamachi. It's still in the prefecture but quite a bit south of us. It's actually not too far off from Nagano oddly enough. Anyhoo so we got a hotel in Tsunan a couple stops away from Tokamachi and thought we'd give it a run. We arrived on Saturday afternoon and had a little look around. The little country city was so cute up there in the mountains. All over in front of buildings or buisnesses they build different kinds of displays from lanterns in the snow, shrine offering of onigiri, snowmen (yukidaruma) of Anpanman, Totoro and Draemon it was really quaint in the city too.




Fun snow displays: Guess who and what they are (mostly Miyazaki characters).






Of course there where snow tunnels, walkways and sculptures too.













Then in the evening there was a big event! Each year they build a stage for a show out of snow. This was the 60th Anniversary stage. It was pretty nice. They had comedians, magician/entertainers, great live music and some other Japanese celebrities.







During the day we enjoyed a bit of a snowball fight and the people.