February 28, 1999. Snow Enduro Festival. Ogunicho, Niigatga Prefecture. The Snow Enduro Festival is a motorcycle endurance race on a course of hard packed snow. This year, on February 28, the race began at 8am on a special course created in the grounds of the "Oguni Animal Park" by packing down the snow. In many a snow country, you can find a snow festival. Most of them are fair ly similar but the Enduro Festival is a unique event that can't be found any where else but in Ogunicho. The course creation begins two weeks before the festival. Since the snow mu st be cleared from the road in order to bring in the snowplows, it is one ha rd day after another for the driver of the plows. On the day of the festival, riders gather from all over Japan. This year,th ere was even an entry from Kumamoto Prefecture in Kyushu. The contest is an enduro race with a time limit. The racers vie to see how many laps they can make in a given amount of time. There are women only races and races for ve teran drivers who hold an International Class A license. Until the sun in l ow in the west, you can hear the shrill of the engines ringing in the fields of snow.

The snow festival in Ogunicho. The Snow Enduro.

The Enduro, is an endurance race for motorcycles in the snow, and is only race of its kind in Japan.