February 13, 2000. "Snow lantern Festival at the Castle Hirosaki" Hirosaki, Aomori prefecture. The festival was held on Feb.10 - 13 at the Hirosaki Park which is famous as "a castle of cherry blossoms". Nearly 200 snow lanterns which were made by companies, schools and other groups in the city created the fantastic scenery along with the white snow and the lighted castle. Although people visit here from all over Japan, I met few people. Assuming it was because of the coldness of the night or it was the last day of the festival, I hanged around on the slippery road softly and nervously.

	There are various shapes of lanterns, glistening turtle shell and octopus' head .... However, most of them were almost 180cm high and shaped as same as traditional stone lanterns. A small light bulb inside the lantern vaguely reflects the shadow of a samurai drawn on the Japanese paper of the lantern.		It took 10 days for SDF to complete the figure "Big Ben". Collecting snow itself sounds like a burden as this winter has few snow.
	Three-hundred miniature "kamakura" (snow dome) viewed from the main enclosure of the castle. You can see the great scenery of Mt.Iwaki in the daytime on fine days from here. Glistening lanterns, which locates across the moat that surrounds the inner citadel was amazingly fantastic.		Coming close to the miniature "kamakura", it is 60cm-high and 50cm in diameter, bigger than I expected. A candle is burning inside.
	The tower of the Hirosaki Castle. Almost all the castle was burned and only the tower is restored now. When I came here for the first time, I rather disappointed to know that only the restored tower is surviving in this huge area. However, the beauty of the lighted tower setting aside the reality persuades me. We should preserve the tower of the castle as well as the survived stone fence.