Lake Towada 56th Sky Lantern Festival

from The Akitan Summer 2021

A Word From the Editor

LAKE TOWADA 56TH SKY FESTIVAL

Lake Towada 56th Sky Festival Brooke Dalgleish

Have you ever heard of the Lake Towada Sky Lantern Festival? If not, you’re in good company. I’m about to start my fourth year as an ALT in Kazuno City, which is about an hour south of Lake Towada, and I had never heard of this festival until this spring.

Around June of this year, I saw it being advertised and I thought maybe it was a new festival that Lake Towada created to overcompensate the lack of tourism it had in 2020. However, I asked my boyfriend about it and he said his dad used to go to the festival when he was a little kid. Little did I know that this festival actually happens every year during the summer and 2021 was its 56th year!

Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, last year’s festival was canceled, but because of this, they made this year’s festival two days instead of the usual one day.

My boyfriend and a small group of our friends decided to go on Sunday, August 8th together, but he also surprised me with tickets to go on Saturday, August 7th. You can buy tickets online and print them at your local convenience store or buy them personally at the tourism office at Lake Towada. There were two types of tickets you could buy. The most popular one was a ¥3000 ticket which gets you into the festival, but also gives you your own lantern. The second one was a ¥2000 ticket for a night cruise where you don’t get a lantern, but you can watch them from aboard a decorated cruise ship. Checkin time was from 5-7:30pm which of course included temperature and mask checks.

LAKE TOWADA 56TH SKY FESTIVAL On Saturday, the two of us got there early, checked in, and received our lanterns. I was a little worried that the lanterns would be the ones you see floating away in the sky later becoming trash and being more detrimental to the environment, however, that was not the case. They were LED lanterns that were connected to a long spool of line. It was just like a kite! It made it very easy to control because you could pick and choose your length. The colors of the LED lights were orange and blue, orange being the vast majority. You couldn’t choose the color you received but we were both content with getting orange. They had an area to write a wish on your lantern with markers that they provided, but we skipped that part due to our worries about covid. Instead, I pulled out one of my lipsticks and we wrote with that on our lanterns. In pandemic times, you gotta do what you gotta do! My boyfriend wrote about wishing everyone a happy future and I wrote about everyone being safe and healthy. Since we got there early, we decided to find a nice spot on the beach to enjoy the picnic we packed. It was one of those days that was hot but also a little breezy making the humidity bearable. There were a lot of people, a lot of foreigner families, which meant a lot of people from the Misawa base in Aomori. This made sense because half of the lake is in Akita and the other half is in Aomori. Although, I never felt unsafe because everyone was pretty good about wearing a mask and social distancing. We relaxed until about 8pm and then there were announcements that the people taking the cruise were about to board and we would “release” the lanterns at 8:30pm. Even though there was

a specified timeline, many people were already letting their lanterns float high in the sky which gave a perfect opportunity to take tons of pictures among the scenery.

8:30 rolled around and the countdown started and at the count of one everyone on the beach who had a lantern let it float in the air until there was no more give on the line. It was beautiful and magical and they played the song, “I See the Light” by Mandy Moore that plays during the lantern scene in the animated movie “Tangled”. It was breathtaking to see all these lanterns surrounded by a beautiful starry night. It was so fun and we got to enjoy this spectacular view for about 30 minutes. Then they ended it with a firework show because, sasuga Japan! After that, everyone was free to go! It had a very chill and relaxed atmosphere and for the first time in a year I felt like I was free of my worries and could actually enjoy a summer festival in Japan again. On Sunday we came back with some of our friends, but decided to do the hour-long night cruise instead. We checked in early and at 8pm we boarded our cruise ship where we were given a free drink (local apple juice) with our ticket. Both our drinks and the cruise ship were lit up with beautiful lights which made it easy to see in the dark. The cruise ship also had three levels, which made it easy to social distance

THE AKITAN ourselves. Again at 8:30, we got to see everyone release their lanterns from the beach, and at 9pm it ended with another firework show. We returned back to the docks once it finished and slowly made our way home. So there you go! Even in my third year as an ALT I’m still learning about all that my backyard has to offer. I’m not sure if they will have two days next year for this festival or if they will do the night cruise (it was new this year), but if you’re around the first weekend in August of next year, I would highly recommend the Lake Towada Sky Lantern Festival. Enjoy!