Yokote

We had been warned that Akita in February is not a place you visit so much as endure, and the train in from the coast made a decent case for that — snow stacked to the windowsills of houses, the whole world reduced to white and the black scribble of bare trees. Then we came out of Yokote station into a dusk already thick with falling snow, and by the time full dark arrived the town had done the thing we’d come for, and I stopped feeling cold about it entirely.

The night the snow glows

The Kamakura festival happens every 15th and 16th of February, and it is roughly seven hundred years old. All across Yokote, townspeople build kamakura — squat domes of snow, hollowed out and big enough to sit several people, with a small altar inside dedicated to the water deity. At nightfall they light a candle in each, and the whole town fills with soft, buttery domes of light glowing up through packed snow. Inside sit the local children, and as you pass they call out — “Haitte tanse! Ogande tanse!” — come in, pray to the god, and here, have some. We ducked into one, knees to our chins, and a boy of maybe eight solemnly handed us cups of hot amazake and a grilled rice cake, taking his duties as host with total seriousness.

Little candles on the riverbank

Down along the Yokote River, the festival does something quieter and, to me, even lovelier. On the snowbanks people carve hundreds of tiny mini-kamakura, each no bigger than a shoebox, and set a single candle in each. From the bridge you look down on a whole hillside of them — a scattering of small flames on blue snow, flickering, going out one by one and being relit. Lia leaned on the railing without speaking for a long time. It was properly, achingly cold, the kind that finds the gaps in your gloves, and neither of us wanted to leave.

Yakisoba and a castle in the snow

Yokote has a second, warmer claim to fame: its yakisoba, a local obsession of thick springy noodles topped with a fried egg and, oddly and rightly, pickled ginger. We ate it standing at a steamy counter with our coats still on, grateful past words. The next morning, the snow having eased, we climbed to Yokote Castle — a small hilltop keep, more town lookout than fortress — and stood in knee-deep drifts looking out over a valley smoothed white to the mountains. The kamakura were gone by daylight, just wet mounds now, but the memory of all that low warm light held on the whole train ride home.

Getting There

Yokote sits in the Ōu basin of inland Akita, on the JR Ōu Main Line. From Akita Station it’s about ninety minutes by local train, or take the Akita Shinkansen to Ōmagari and change. The Kamakura festival is fixed to 15–16 February, so plan around those two nights and book a room early — the town’s few inns fill fast, and many visitors stay in Akita city and come in for the evening. Dress far warmer than you think you need to; this is genuine snow country, and the magic all happens standing still, outdoors, after dark.