Plan B: Towada Winter Festival

One snowy morning…….I could start almost every blog post like that this winter…….we were planning to go to Hirosaki—a famous place two and a half hours away form Misawa where we went several times to view sakura and leaf foliage.

We had planned for months to go to Hirosaki Lantern Festival on Feb. 11th, it was one thing on our checklist that we were missing. After much deliberation and discussion with all our friends who were hoping to go, we decided against driving that far to a winter festival. We weren’t only concerned about driving conditions through the mountains, although via a tollway (but that meant $45 round trip). We were mostly worried that our little guys will get frozen from the wind chill after half an hour and no one would be having fun then. The whole point is to stay at the Hirosaki castle grounds after the sun goes down so we could see the lanterns.

Instead of going to Hirosaki, we decided to go with our Plan B—going to Towada Winter Festival by lake Towada. The drive was about an hour and forty minutes, part of it through Oirase Gorge, a very windy road through the mountains that lead to the lake.

Sometimes we saw signs like that:

I guess avalanches can happen, especially if the earth shakes, right?:)

We saw several of these beautiful frozen waterfalls. The kids were amazed that even such fast flowing water somehow froze.

This was our second time going to Towada Winter Festival, so we knew what to expect. This year, it was extra snowy!

The main attraction for the kids was sledding. They had two hills and a ton of kids—no one fighting or yelling.

Katya, Alex, Mark and their friends, minus the babies. I think this heart is a staple structure for the festival because it was here even the first year when were here.

All right, after an hour of playing, we were cold and hungry. We had a great variety of Japanese to choose from. There were several tents and spots to eat with heaters around. We got a whole bunch of unknown foods and a turkey leg (Mark wanted one).  You’d think that in almost three years that we’d been here I’d memorize the names of the foods, but I haven’t. Still only know by their looks whether or not I like them.

Here is picture of me looking scary-haha and trying to get the gross insides out of the shell. In fact, they were quite delicious! Warm and juicy, cooked in some sort of broth, they tasted just like typical food form Mutsu Bay area.

After dinner and a little more sledding we decided it was time to go home. Who wants to stay up in the dark and in the cold till 8 pm to see the fireworks? We might have to come back in July when they do Towada Summer Festival with fireworks.

People advertise this Winter Festival as “why go to Sapporo if you have ice sculptures right here”. Well, this festival doesn’t live up to all the hype for the second time for us. Yeah, it’s a nice half day trip when it’s too cold to go further out, but otherwise, you can skip it:).

Apparently, we also need to learn how to use our camera in the dark-haha. That’s the only semi decent picture after dark. 

OR maybe we should save up for a new fancy camera!

Sayonara for now.