Hearing winter of Akita, what do you imagine? For example, skiing, snow boarding, and snowman? Especially unique one is Lunar New Year events. Namahage Sedo Festival in Oga City, Fire Festival in Daisen City, Kamakura Festival in Yokote City, and Inukko Festival in Yuzawa City . In this article, I’d like to report “Kamakura Festival in Yokote City” I went for the first time in this year! Let’s check the winter event for feeling colder!
It’s the event of snow domes. This festival is like a symbol of winter in Akita, and many visitors gather every year. There is god of Shinto inside of big snow dome, and children welcome visitors. They serve sweet sake and enjoy talking with visitors. They are so adorable wearing traditional gown.
What else, there is the place you can see many tiny snow domes. It shows us the fantastic landscape by fire of candles at night.
You can see beautiful landscape at the winter festival in the area it snows a lot, it makes you forget cold! However, it was warmer than usual in this year and it kept melting snow even it snows. So, the staffs needed to bring snow from the other place. Especially, it was raining in Yokote city at the day and we could see the different scene snow domes covered by blue blankets!
Like this, the snow domes protected gently by the staff looked so beautiful! The rounded shape was cute and the sound reflected well inside them. It’s for the first time to operate as usual since the Covid-19 spread, and welcoming by the children came back! They called visitors with loud voice and encouraging, and made us fine!
There are 5 fields to see, and located each other with the distance we can walk for 10-20 minutes and we could access every place by the shuttle-bus! The buses came to the bus stops which signed by the balloon light! We could get on it when it’s not full, or we waited for next one for more 10-15 minutes. I felt it’s hard to move by walk because it’s too cold even in this year. We parked our car in the instant parking area and moved to the main area by the bus. I was surprised the transportation is planned well like this!
We went to only the Yokote castle area because we are late for arriving. We could see the collaboration the castle lighted up and snow domes fantastically. Going up to the highest floor in the castle, we could see the beautiful panoramic view of the city! I recommend for the date with your partner 🙂
There are stalls around the Yokote city hall and we could enjoy the Akita street foods! I ate fried Tofu with cheese and Yokote Yakisoba! Fried Tofu was my favorite taste like crispy and juicy. Yokote yakisoba is one of the most famous street foods in the nation, it has get the Grand Prix of B-grade gourmet. It was so tasty to eat outside in the cold.
Seeing it was so busy around the stalls, I felt so happy to come to the place where so many people get together like that! I found many times the staffs keep moving for welcoming and livening up the festival till I’m on my way to home! There are many areas fall the tough situation to inherit the traditional culture by decreasing population and aging in Akita. Whereas I’m really proud of the people in Yokote to protect the wonderful festival like that, and I’d like many of the foreign tourists to visit there once!
And I give you a big news! The shuttle bus will start to operate from Akita Airport to Yokote station on this July! It costs only 300yen, and takes an hour and 10 minutes! It’s so surprising! The number of seats are 7, and you need reservation by calling or via the Internet. You can check the deatail about it from the Website of Yokote City. It will be the most useful way to access to Yokote city! Would you like to visit Yokote in this winter?
