In the north of Nagano Prefecture, mid-January is the dead of winter. White mountains rise up into cloud. Fields are blanketed in snow, woods are bare and villages are hushed by cold. All along the roadsides, snowbanks rise as high as car windows, their sides revealing layered strata of snowfall after snowfall — the geology of winter. This is real snow country.
Tucked against the mountains near the prefecture's northern edge, the village of Nozawa Onsen isn't known for much. Other than the ski slopes above the town (often bypassed for steeper ones elsewhere) and the steaming waters of the hot springs that give the place its name (too hot for any but the most hardened bathers), there's very little to see here. The only thing that makes Nozawa Onsen famous is its fire festival.
On Jan. 15 each year — koshōgatsu, meaning "little New Year's" — the place explodes into this mad spectacle.