Lake Towada Winter Festival

On Saturday night we decided to join Derick, Lisa, and Lisa's parents on a nighttime excursion to the Lake Towada Winter Festival. Many of our friends are going up to the gigantic snow festival in Sapporo this week, and James and I figured this would be a way to get a small taste of the lights and sculptures. Obviously, this local festival was much smaller and not nearly as impressive, but we had fun. I just wish we would have realized how extremely cold it was going to be. They had a full night of entertainment planned, including traditional Japanese music performances on a stage carved out of a snow bank as well as a fireworks display over the lake. But we were so frozen by the time the program started that we gave up and drove home. If we go again in the future, we will get the timing right. At least we got some great travel photos (which is all I really care about...) Enjoy!

The tunnel of lights leading into the festival

Traditional Japanese festival food - fried meat on a stick
and fruit dipped in chocolate on a stick. (Really, anything on a stick...)

Eww. Salted fish on a stick. I have no idea how to even eat that!

The entertainment inside the food pavilion was - of course - karaoke!

Nebuta float on display (another Japanese festival)

They had two snow slides set up so little kids could do some night sledding

Snow lanterns lighting the pathways

We got to go inside of some real igloos!

Hangin' out inside an igloo

Ice sculptures!

Church made of snow!

Group photo in front of a waterfall of lights

Only in Japan...