Strangest Festival Yonekawa Mizukaburi Tour February 1 to 3 2019

Strangest Festival Yonekawa Mizukaburi Tour February 1 to 3 2019

Witness a traditional Festival for fire prevention in the middle of the coldest weather of winter.　Discover also a natural beauty of thousands of wintering birds (swans and geese) on Iakes and paddies,

Day 1：Meet with our guide at Kurikomakogen Station of Tohoku Shinkansen at 14:00. You will be guided to the best spot to watch thousands of swans and numerous groups of geese returning to the lake in order to spend the night. 

Day 2：Enjoy Yonekawa Mizukaburi, a traditional ritual for fire prevention. In the morning, you will enjoy festive excitement of the men transformed into deities wearing a costume made of straws and follow them picking some straws from their costumes.

In the evening, join the locals at a party to thank Deities for their prayer services.

Day 3：Enjoy cooking and tasting a local dish “Hattojiru” with local mamma

Escaping from the bustle of touristy spots, discover another side of Japan deep in the countryside. Combine a natural beauty of thousands of wintering birds on Izunuma Lake and a rustic ritual for fire prevention.

You will stay 2 nights at an old farm house with Futon bedding. Enjoy a Japanese rural life in rural surroundings.

Day 1 

Meet with our guide at Kurikomakogen Station of Tohoku Shinkansen at 14:00.

On the way to BAKKE Ottobatake House (vacation rental), you will see a lot of swans and geese gleaning rice.

You will be guided to the best spot to watch numerous groups of birds returning to the lake in order to spend the night.

90 % of geese migrating to Japan for wintering gather inside of Miyagi Prefecutre. Many of them come to the biggest marshy area of Tome.

Thousands of swans from Siberia stay on the lakes which don’t freeze in winter.

Day 2

Immerse yourself in the countryside culture, joining locals in one of the strangest festivals in Japan, Yonekawa Mizukaburi, a traditional ritual for fire prevention which has been passed down for centuries in Yonekawa, Tome City. This event was inscribed as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in November of 2018, along with other similar 9 festivals.

In the morning, visit the Yado (the house of the local hereditary leader family for Yonekawa Mizukaburi) to see the men make straw costumes, wear them on their almost naked bodies and put some soot on their cheeks; they thus get transformed from human beings into visiting KAMI (deities) after making a prayer to Akiba-daigongen (kami of fire). 

Follow them, who rush through the town making strange voices and splashing water on the roofs of houses.

This is a prayer for fire prevention.

In the afternoon, we will take a walk in the region, visiting rustic temples or shrines.

In the evening, participate in a party called “Kasagosu”, a local gathering to thank Deities for their prayer services.

Day 3 

Enjoy cooking and tasting a local dish “Hattojiru” with local mammas.

We could call it “pasta in soup”, as it consists of flour dough and various seasonal vegetables. The locals make it at a special occasion such as village festivals or just for private gatherings.

After lunch, you will head for Kurikoma Station.

Despite of all the charms you can experience, we cannot deny the coldness you have to experience at the same time. Please prepare for the coldest days of the year and bring warm clothes such as snow jacket or thick socks.

Ottobatake House, your home for three days, is a local traditional house with tatami rooms, paper doors and kotatsu, which means you have to be prepared for the coldness inside of the house, also. As it was the case in all the houses in this region, the toilets are in an adjacent cabin to the main house.