Japanese Igloo Festival - Kamakura Matsuri in Yokote, Akita

February 15th-16th, the people of Yokote in Akita Prefecture in Northern Japan build two-meter tall snow huts known as Kamakura. Inside they have a small grill for keeping warm and for cooking mochi, chewy rice cake, and for heating up amezaki a type of sweet sake with almost no alcohol. Also inside is a small altar dedicated to Suijin-sama the god of water.

In ages past, Yokote had a drinking water shortage so the festival was created to get Suijin-sama's attention.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Japan
• Akita
• Yokote
• Kamakura-matsuri
• travel
• festival
• matsuri
• culture
• winter
• snow
• igloo

[TheJapanChannelDcom]

I had dinner in one of those in Nagano once..

awesome, aren't they Dave!

[RoninDave]

what did you eat?

[ericsurf6]

Coolness~!

I was just up at the Sapporo Snow Festival

[RoninDave]

How was it this year? I went last year and back in 2006. Great festival! But last year they had less snow and visitors than in previous years.

[demonkogure]

日本では相手に対してhey!というのは無礼です。

[Prayforthewolf]

I just started checking out your channel here... And this video has me smiling again. =)

[BlkUnk]

thanks for bringing me along.

[Limastudent]

Beautiful video. Amazake is a sweet rice drink and mochi is pounded sweet rice. Not sweetened rice but a different type of rice called sweet rice. But they do add sugar to it sometimes. Mochi genmai we used to make both.

[Enjieko]

What an incredibly neat festival! All the igloos together, and the fire light is just so pretty. <3

[DOty3]

I could go for some amazake.

In a way it makes me think of apple cider but white like eggnog.

[DreamingJapan]

Wow dude , that's perdy ^_^

[ccr1965]

wow. They even have a big giant party igloo.

[TheJapanChannelDcom]

@RoninDave

nabe ^_^

[ericsurf6]

Plenty of snow.  Video coming soon.