Around a hundred kamakura — domed snow huts about three metres across, with an altar to the water deity inside — are built across Yokote, and on the two festival evenings children sit in them and call out to passers-by to come in. Inside they serve amazake, sweet non-alcoholic rice wine, and mochi grilled on a brazier, and the guest leaves a small offering.
The practice is about four hundred years old and is tied to the water god rather than to snow as such.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass.
The dates are fixed at 15–16 February. Yokote is in the Akita snow country, where annual falls of several metres are normal, and the Shinkansen reaches Ōmagari forty minutes away.
PlanningFixed on 15–16 February; the huts are built in the days before and the invitation is the event.
Dates
computed from the rule
Computed from the recurrence rule we record for this entry, not copied from a listing. A date marked ~ comes from a calendar conversion and the observance may fall a day or two either side.