Fire Festival

20th February, 2010

Today we managed to go on our walk as planned yesterday as it was a nice clear day and not overly cold.

This is a Snow Bunny I made on our way into town...hehe

I found this Russian Man whilst I was out walking..hehe

Found this funny little sign outside of an Art Gallery on our way into town.

After wandering around town for a bit we caught the bus to where we thought the Fire Festival was but we misjudged it by quite a few stops and ended up at another part of the resort. So after catching the right bus we eventually found the 40th Fire Festival of Happo, Hakuba.

Tonight will have to be one of the highlights of our trip, it was great to mix with the locals at one of their celebrations.

These are the food tents that were filled with many local dishes like Pork , Vegetable Miso with Udon Noodles, Local Marbled Beef on Skewers dipped in brown sauce, Chicken Skewers, Seafood  Bowls, Spiced Teas and Gluhwein ( Hot Spiced Wine).







                                                                                                                                                             The first event was a Flare Display by the Happo Ski School Instructors

For all special occaisions like festivals and weddings a Sake Cask is broken open and we got to witness this tonight. The Sake is then shared with the community.

After the breaking of the Sake Cask we were entertained by the Happo Traditional Drumming Group...I took some video of this but unfortunately it doesn't do much justice to how it was in person but its a sample anyway...was amazing to watch and listen to. They did several different performances with all different variations of drumming styles.

Click Here!! Traditional Japanese Drumming ~ Video

The big drum that kept everyone else in time...was funny to see little kids drumming away on this.









They were very active in their drumming jumping all over the place

The Happo Ski School did some formation skiing with no crashes which was very spectacular to watch and afterwards they did stunts through a Ring of Fire

The night finished with a spectacular fireworks show, even the Japanese ooo and ahhh at them.
It was a great night and  freezing our butts off was almost worth it, standing on the snow for hours will do that but the 30min walk home soon got us all warmed up again.

And we made it just in time for a Hot Spring Bath before bed..woohoo!!

Another great night in Japan ...