{"id":29066,"date":"2013-02-26T08:00:55","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=29066"},"modified":"2013-02-25T22:35:24","modified_gmt":"2013-02-26T02:35:24","slug":"2013-tokamachi-snow-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2013\/02\/26\/2013-tokamachi-snow-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"2013 Tokamachi Snow Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by Benjamin Martin<\/strong><\/a>, a 5th year JET on Kume Island<\/a> in Okinawa<\/a>, publisher of the blog MoreThingsJapanese.com<\/a><\/strong><\/em>\u00a0and author of the YA fantasy series\u00a0<\/em>Samurai Awakening<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(Tuttle).<\/em><\/p>\n

\"IMG_6916\"<\/a>With its tall mountains and island\u00a0geography, Japan has areas with heavy rain throughout the year and snowfall in the winter. \u00a0Over the years, in many areas the snow has been changed from a hardship to benefit. \u00a0The first place in Japan to create a snow festival is Tokamachi in Niigata prefecture.<\/p>\n

Tokamachi<\/a> (\u5341\u65e5\u753a\u5e02) City is located in eastern Niigata prefecture. \u00a0The names of that area are interesting in that they refer to the days it used to take to travel to them by foot. \u00a0When we went there from the Echigo-Yuzawa station we passed several towns with these similar names such as Muikamachi (six-day town). \u00a0The area has many small towns and is primarily full of rice farms. \u00a0Niigata is famous for the delicious rice that the large amounts of snowfall help create.<\/p>\n

This year’s snow festival took place between February 15 and 17th with the main stage events taking place on the 16th at the local Tokamachi Elementary School sports ground. \u00a0As with all the nearby farms, the fields were topped with over two and a half meters of snow. \u00a0While the snow is difficult to live with, the locals have found some ingenious ways to not only make it work for them, but to enjoy it as well.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6899\"<\/a>One of the major attractions of the Tokamachi snow festival<\/a> are the snow sculptures. \u00a0From small igloos to towering designs the sculptures turn all the excess snow into art. \u00a0Local artists and teams transform piles of snow into everything from popular manga characters to full size replicas of\u00a0buildings\u00a0and ships. \u00a0These \u00a0are so popular that they have spread to other snow festivals such as the more famous one in Hokkaido.<\/p>\n

Every year the main stage for the event is constructed of snow. \u00a0This year the design was a towering ship and compass. \u00a0The portals were lighted and throughout the main event fireworks were lighted around it. \u00a0It was a surprisingly long and steep walk from the lower town to the event but as guests of the local town government we had great tickets that put me 5 people back from the stage and only three from the walkway.<\/p>\n

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Originally, the focus of the festival was to highlight the beautiful kimonos created in Niigata. \u00a0The main event after the opening speeches is still a fashion show of kimonos which are especially striking against the pure white of the snowy stage. Following the show were performances by artists Junichi Inagaki, Becky, and LG Monkees. \u00a0As well as\u00a0appearances\u00a0by the local school children singing along with Tetsu and Tomo who helped to MC.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6998\"<\/a>Despite the cold weather and snow falling throughout much of the show, huge numbers of people came out to see the show and it was well worth a few cold toes. \u00a0The entire event was well-organized with crowd control built into the area with snow dividers. \u00a0While we weren’t allowed to take photos or video of the performers, we were allowed to take pictures of the stage and fashion show. \u00a0We didn’t have time to see every sculpture but I did catch a few on our way out. \u00a0I hope you enjoy a little look at a wonderful town and event. \u00a0I’ll share more on the trip soon.<\/p>\n

For more photos from the event visit MoreThingsJapanese.com<\/a><\/p>\n

**Don’t forget to enter the TWO free giveaways for signed copies of my book plus extras. \u00a0Enter on morethingswriting.com<\/a> and\/or Goodreads<\/a>!**<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted by Benjamin Martin, a 5th year JET on Kume Island in Okinawa, publisher of the blog MoreThingsJapanese.com\u00a0and author of the YA fantasy series\u00a0Samurai Awakening\u00a0(Tuttle). With its tall mountains and island\u00a0geography, Japan has areas with heavy rain throughout the year and snowfall in the winter. \u00a0Over the years, in many areas the snow has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[368],"tags":[887,885,732,191,173,886],"class_list":["post-29066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-traveltourism","tag-887","tag-events-2","tag-festival","tag-japan","tag-niigata","tag-snow"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-7yO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29066"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29068,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29066\/revisions\/29068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}