
Guide to Tsunan Snow Festival
To celebrate the revitalization of Tsunan Town, the Tsunan Snow Festival is a yearly winter festival held in March. Known to be one of the towns that get the heaviest snowfalls in Japan, the town takes advantage of this and has a day of snowy festivities for locals and visiting travelers. Enjoy a day of live performances, go snow tubing, see snow igloos, and launch a paper lantern in the sky. Food stalls are also set up at various locations for travelers to try the local cuisine. In this guide, we’ll discuss how to best enjoy your Tsunan Snow Festival experience.
Event
Tsunan Snow Festival
Date
March 8, 2025
Location
New Greenpia Tsunan and Owarino Venue (near Tsunan Town Hall), Niigata Prefecture
Entrance fee
Free (a ticket is necessary for the sky lantern event)
Getting to the Tsunan Snow Festival

Access to Tsunan Town is limited, so planning your journey in advance is advisable to ensure smooth connections to local trains!
The most direct way to Tsunan Town is to take the Hokuriku Shinkansen from Tokyo Station to Iiyama Station. At Iiyama Station, you’ll switch to the local Iiyama Line. The local line will then take you directly to Tsunan Station, which will take just over three hours of travel.
Alternatively, take the Joetsu Shinkansen from Tokyo Station to Nagaoka Station. At Nagaoka Station, switch to the regular Joetsu Line and take the train to Echigo-Kawaguchi Station. Finally, transfer to the Iiyama Line from here to Tsunan Station. This trip takes three and a half hours.
On the event day, shuttle buses operate between various parts of town and New Greenpia Tsunan. These buses typically require a fee and may have specific schedules. It's recommended to check the official event website for more details. (Purchasing the event ticket is necessary to use the shuttle bus.)
Brief background of the festival

With the heavy snowfall that Tsunan gets, it can be challenging to enjoy the winter season if you’re constantly wading through snow. The Tsunan Snow Festival has been held since 1977 to bring the community together and boost the morale of the local people. The festival has evolved to add different performances and events, creating a lively and festive atmosphere despite the weather conditions. The sky lanterns were not part of the original festival but were added in 2012, acting as a prayer for the lives lost to the Northern Nagano Earthquake and the Great East Japan Earthquake.
How to enjoy the festivities

Plenty of activities are held throughout the day at the Owarino Venue, which is a three-minute walk from the Tsunan Town Hall. At Owarino, food stalls are set up, and you can enjoy performances from local performing artists. At New Greenpia, you can enjoy snow activities such as snow tubing and snow biking. On the day of the snow festival, the amulets and charms that local people brought to the temples during New Year’s are burned to pray for good harvests and prosperous businesses. The local traditional art of Akazawa Kagura and a tengu (supernatural Shinto being) dance are performed while burning sacred items.
At nightfall, people gather at New Greenpia to launch thousands of sky lanterns. Approximately 2,000 sky lanterns will fly up into the night sky, carrying with them the dreams and wishes of the festival-goers. Tickets for the lantern event participation must be purchased in advance.
Local foods to try

Due to the rivers and water sources that run through Niigata, the region is famous for its production of rice. If you’re coming to Tsunan, be sure to sample koshihikari rice, known for its soft, sticky, and chewy texture.
Good rice also means good sake. Several stalls at the snow festival will be selling warm cups of sake, some made by Tsunan’s breweries. Tsunan’s rich water sources also lend themselves to soba noodle production, and the local Naeba soba is made with Tsunan’s clear water. Finally, be sure to try Tsunan pork, which is famous for its mellow sweetness and mild aftertaste.
Where to stay: Hana to Hotaru Yu no Sato Yukiguni

After a cold day of fun festivities, you can warm up at Hana to Hotaru Yu no Sato Yukiguni, which is just a three-minute walk from Tsunan Station. If you’re coming from near Town Hall, a shuttle bus is available to the inn.
Guests can stay in a beautifully furnished Japanese-style room with tatami flooring. From November to April, the rooms come with a kotatsu, a low wooden table with a blanket draped over for guests to sit under and warm themselves.

For food options, dinner is served at the inn’s restaurant Sakura Chaya, which features a tantalizing spread of local ingredients. Some of the highlights include the miso carp soup, which uses broiled carp for flavoring, koshihikari rice grown by the inn, and homemade sweets like apple pie or tiramisu.
Of course, staying at a ryokan is not complete without a soak at the premise’s hot spring. There are two main baths, the Shinano bath and the Chikuma bath. From the Chikuma bath, you can gaze out and occasionally observe a train passing on the Iiyama Line. The baths switch gender access at the start of the day, so take a bath the following morning to get the best of both worlds!
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