Destination Spotlight

Visiting the Ouchi-juku Snow Festival

Visiting the Ouchi-juku Snow Festival

Ouchi-juku, in Shimogo Town, is a hamlet with a rich history and is well known having been used as a ‘post-town’ for travelers during the Edo period. The area includes 33 buildings which have been painstakingly preserved as they were hundreds of years ago. Ouchi-juku’s breathtaking snow festival is held on the 2nd weekend of February every year.

Most of the buildings that make up the main street of Ouchi-juku now operate as gift shops, but visitors can still stay the night in three traditional minshuku in the town. These houses have access to electricity and the internet, but Ouchi-juku still manages to feel like it exists in a whole world of its own.

One of the best parts of visiting Ouchi-juku is taking a trip up to the viewpoint that overlooks the beautiful thatched houses. I headed there early upon arrival, in the hope of getting a good photograph, but the snow was so strong that I ended up getting more snow in my lens than anything else!

I have seen photographs of Ouchi-juku in the snow on the internet before, so I was really happy to have the chance to go and see this view for myself, and take my own photographs. It definitely didn’t disappoint.

Ouchi-juku Snow Festival takes place over the space of a weekend. There are a number of events over the two days that visitors of all ages can enjoy.

One of the events that took place on Saturday was a “mochi pick-up” event. This event is where mochi (glutinous rice balls enjoyed as a sweet treat) are thrown from the roofs of buildings. Visitors can compete with each other to see how many they can collect!

Even if you miss the mochi pick-up event like me, visitors can appreciate the hand-made mochi as a beautiful decoration displayed on the trees around the area. The bright and bold colors of the mochi were really beautiful against the snow.

Another event during the weekend is called Maruta Kiri Competition (丸太切り競争). This involves trying to saw through a small section of tree trunk faster than the other competitors.

I was invited to take part in this competition! It was so much more difficult than it looked and I think that it took me about 3 minutes to cut through the wood, which was a bit embarrassing! However, it was also really fun, because the men in charge of the competition kept teasing me about how bad I was and insisted on showing me how to do it properly.

I got to take back my bit of wood as a souvenir. I asked the volunteer what I should use it for. Despite it being twice the diameter of a map, he suggested that I use it as a coaster. I took it around with me for the rest of the event!

If you don’t feel like performing yourself, visitors can watch performances of traditional performing arts. The photo below is from the Sanshi Kagura performance that took place on Sunday. These performances were very important hundreds of years ago, when they were most often performed around the start of the new year, as a way of warding off bad luck and evil throughout the year.

Other events included a soba noodle eating competition, a dance performance by the area’s local yosakoi dance team, and a group effort to try and make Japan’s longest dango mochi (Mochi skewered on a stick).

Between events, it was nice to check out the local cuisine. The food stalls aren’t only for the festival, but are open to visitors throughout the year. Traditional grilling techniques are used to make well-known local delicacies like senbei (rice crackers).

There are also many other things to explore with your friends and family, such as a number of different igloos, some of which actually function as makeshift shrines, whereas others make good rest spaces.

As the sun went down, I decided to go back to the viewpoint and see what Ouchi-juku looked like at night. It was absolutely amazing, especially because the lighting of the lanterns – which are also made of snow – had already started to take place.

Certain parts of the staircase and path to the viewpoint became slippery as the temperature dropped, so I would advise visitors to take care. I have never seen so many people slipping over during just one day.

When I reached the bottom, I decided to have a look at some of the local shops before the fireworks display of the evening started. I fell in love with these cute hand-made ornaments – each of which has its own meaning and importance. I bought some of the chilies, which were used centuries ago to ward off spirits.

Another highlight of the Ouchi-juku Snow Festival was the fireworks show. The heavy snowy, strong wind made a really beautiful foreground for the 100 fireworks set off on Saturday evening. This is the most stunning location that I have ever seen a fireworks display.

I loved watching the faces of the locals as they enjoyed the views of the night sky.

I had an absolutely amazing trip to the Ouchi-juku Snow Festival, and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in traditional Japanese culture and local festivals. I would be very interested in coming back next year

ACCESS

Ouchi-juku can be accessed by taxi or bus from Yunokami Onsen station, which is on the Aizu Railway line. It can become very crowded during festival time, so if coming by taxi, I would suggest booking both journeys of your taxi in advance, and preparing for congestion upon entering the area. If coming by rental car, make sure to prepare yourself for long queues to get into and out of the car parks.

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    How I Joined the Kohata Flag Festival

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That’s how I ended up getting up early on a chilly Sunday morning and heading to the sleepy mountain village of Kohata, a district of equally sleepy Nihonmatsu City.(If the name sounds familiar, Nihonmatsu itself is widely known for its extravagant three-day lantern festival in October, and the Chrysanthemum Doll Festival which takes place roughly around the same time to coincide with autumn colours.)The flag festival, meanwhile, is the biggest yearly event for Kohata. Although the main procession takes place on the Sunday, there are also festivities on the Saturday, including mizugori (purifying oneself with buckets and buckets of cold spring water), dancing and a foot race while holding the great flags.This first day is also when first-time participants to the festival – usually boys who have come of age – are taken halfway up the mountain via the woodland trails to complete their initiation into the flag-bearers. This involves slipping through a narrow gap just barely wide enough for an adult to pass through, before heading up to Okitsushima Shrine to pray and be inducted as a member of the procession.Unlike the all-whites of the regular flag-carriers, these first-timers wear red and are treated as adults. Although usually there are two or three new members, this year there was only one, who was forced to take photos by his family at every step of the journey.The festival traces its history back nearly a thousand years. A defeated Genji army in 1055 barricaded themselves in meagre defences on Mt. Kohata, and it’s said that their pursuers among the Abe forces mistook the heavy snow for Genji banners and fled from certain victory. This is one of the reasons that white flags appear alongside the more colourful ones in the flag procession.The flag-bearers depart from the Kohata Community Center at 8:30am on Sunday. They first gather at 7:30, and there is an opening ceremony from 8:00, but this is mostly speeches from local officials and guests of honour, and since the grounds are surrounded by rows of trees, it can get fairly chilly at that time of the morning – I would say arriving shortly before departure time would be fine for most people.That being said, this is where I met Hatarou, the local mascot (this is a pun, since 'hata' is Japanese for flag. It'd be like calling a mascot 'Flaggy', but funnier.) This also makes Hata Matsuri one of the few Fukushima festivals with its own mascot.The procession lasts for several hours, taking the marchers from the community center in the west part of town up into the foothills of Mt. Kohata, and eventually leading to the magnificent Okitsushima Shrine deep in the mountain woodland. 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Both the members of the procession and regular attendees struck up conversations with me about my hometown, my experiences in Fukushima, and my thoughts on the festival. Some offered suggestions for places I should visit in the area, while several local school-age children spoke to me in English they’d been practising in class.I got chatting to one group of flag-bearers about the festival and the area, and one of them asked if I’d like to try carrying his flag, which I did for about five minutes! (His friends bantered him relentlessly about getting the visitors to do his work for him). Although the flags are as heavy as they look, the most strenuous part is simply how large they are – the village is beset with power lines and overhanging tree branches, and making sure the flags don’t catch on anything requires constant vigilance.Making that task more difficult, of course, is the fact that the flag-bearers are drinking robustly from the moment they assemble at the community center at 7:30 in the morning. Every so often, when the procession slowed and took a break, members of the group carrying hefty bottles would pour a sweet sake into small bamboo cups that each man carried on his hip.It meant that wherever we walked, there was always the fragrant smell of the sake in the air, and more than one member of the procession arrived at the shrine a little worse for wear. One younger flag-bearer drank a little too much and was bundled into a fire engine to go home about halfway through the route...And so we headed to Okitsushima Shrine. Although we passed the front entrance during our walk up the mountain, the flags must first be taken through the back route to the Tainai Kuguri Rock, where a prayer is said for health and good fortune before continuing up the trail. In the woods the slopes can be fairly steep and the footing a little slippery, so this was where I wished I’d worn slightly more rugged shoes with a better grip. Fortunately, you only need to pass this way once, as you’ll use the front steps to leave the shrine later.In addition to the beautiful old shrine building at Okitsushima, the grounds also play host to a beautiful deep red pagoda that is a central pillar of the shrine’s history. It’s said that when famous warlord Date Masamune set Mt. 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Even though the festival is held just after the peak of autumn colour season, there were still streaks of orange in the hillsides, and there’s more than one viewpoint looking over the town as you make the climb to the shrine.Although you don’t have to follow the procession all the way to the top, I think it’s worth it to see the final ceremony with all the flags lined up at the shrine, and the pagoda alone is worth the trip. Several people congratulated me for making it all the way to the top, or said they looked forward to seeing me next year.If I were to go again, I’d be keen to see the other ceremonies and events on the Saturday, and I’d probably aim to arrive shortly before departure to skip standing in the cold. Otherwise, as I mentioned above, good walking shoes and snacks / water will come in handy, and bring your camera!For more festivals in Fukushima, why not check out the Aizu Festival or the horse riding samurai of Soma Nomaoi?

    How I Joined the Kohata Flag Festival
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It also included an English-speaking guide, who explained to us not only about the history of the area, but helped with logistical elements – how to dress in the traditional gear, where to go, and how to put our swords away properly...Our troop dressed in the dark navy armour of foot soldiers of the Aizu gunnery units, who were trained both in muskets for ranged combat and katana-style samurai swords for melee. As such, each soldier of the troop was given one of each, as well as a banner of the Aizu Domain (which, for the record, is very easy to bump against door frames and street signs).With the onset of the bad weather, the festival organisers made the difficult decision to protect the traditional armour from water damage with protective rain gear. 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Try the monthly kengido experience, learning samurai sword techniques in a historic dojo in the mountains.

    A Guide to the Aizu Festival – And How to Join Yourself
  3. Destination Spotlight

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    Following Fukushima’s Footpath: A Forest Walk in Nishigo
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