During craft balloon festival people return from urban to reunite with family. Their wishes drawn on the balloons by themselves will come true with craft balloon lift-up. People including tourists participated releasing balloons. It was a fantastic moment !
craft balloon releasing
Many balloons stay in the night sky and eventually disappear into the mountains.
What will happen to the balloon blown away at last ? “Maybe falling in the deep mountains”, local people said.
*) Caution
It was too cold not to stay venue long time.
‘Snow house’ named as ‘KAMAKURA’ in Japanese is a famous play spot among children. They enjoy eating something and playing games in the house. The water God is enshrined inside for wishing coming Spring to bring a lot of water to fields.
Even if not during festival period, we enjoyed a permanent ‘snow house’ in a huge refrigerator. Children inside surround fireplace and look warm, but never warm rather cold !
Just then, people were constructing snow houses here and there in YOKOTE city. First making a snow circle mountain by hand, next making a side hole.
To tell the truth, we could not participate in the tug of war because of Craft Balloon festival held on the same night, so enjoyed tranquility in advance of fight in front of ropes enshrined in the center of town.
KARIWANO is a small town. The residence are divided into 2 groups at this event and fight. Tourist participant is free but no guarantee of accident.
At the next time challenging the exciting match, I would like to make a question, “How do you ensure equality on volume of participants between 2 groups?”
NAMAHAGE Festival held during 3 days is composed of Shintoism, ‘Drama where NAMAHAGEs visit your home’, ’’Ancient dram music’ and NAMAHAGE parade. A lot of kinds of NAMAHAGE are found and they were told to come here from north foreign countries.
Coordination in advance of early check-in and early dinner in your hotel and transportation to reach the venue are strongly recommended for the best place to enjoy NAMAHAGE Festival.
namahage festival venue
’Drama where NAMAHAGE visiting your home’
This video is one scene of NAMAHAGE festival. NAMAHAGE could visit your home to scold lazy children in winter season because they stay away from the fireplace. After scolding, Japanese SAKE is served as a sigh of gratitude.
’Ancient dram music performed by NAMAHAGEs’
Ancient dram music was played and performed in the heavy snow ! Except for in the winter season, you could enjoy these performance in the theater near hot-spring town. Take care of your place or positioning if you would like to record real performance in the festival.
If you compare the ranking of hot springs to sumo wrestling, this is said to be Yokozuna (Grand Champion) in the east. There are many original hot springs along the blue-white river, and fresh hot springs spring from the bottom of the wild bathtub. The hot springs are said to deteriorate from the moment they come into contact with the air, so it’s ideal because they come directly to the bathtub without touching the air. On the other hand, however, some hot springs are ridiculously hot, so be careful not to burn yourself. Another point to note is that you have to go down to the riverbed every time you want to enter any hot spring, so you will be exhausted to enter the hot spring. It may be because this is Yokozuna !
geto hot spring
Hot spring cabin is dismantled before every winter so as not to be crushed by deep snow. Thank you for their hard work and enjoy the hot springs.
