Lake Towada

Kayaks


Duck and dinosaur paddle boats

islet in Lake Towada

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lake Towada

Towada- ko or Lake Towada is an hour and a half drive from Misawa Air Base. This is the largest lake in Honshu island (main state). It is located at the boundary of Aomori and Akita prefectures, in the Towada-Hachimantai National Park and is one of Tohoku's most popular attraction.

There are lots of activities here in Lake Towada that you can try, you can hike, ride and paddle the duck or dinosaur boat, there is also kayaking and a ferry boat where you can ride and tour around the lake which I never tried yet.

Chiyoshi Falls

We accidentally saw this beautiful Chiyoshi Falls when we were heading to Towada Ko (Lake) or Lake Towada last September 5. We saw a lot of tourist buses along the side of the road and out of curiosity I asked my husband to pull over just to check what was going on there. And to my surprise I saw this beautiful water falls and a lot of tourists were taking pictures of it. Those Japanese tourists were carrying humongous lenses and tripods and unfortunately I forgot to bring my tiny tripod LOL (good for me, it's so shameful to bring mine while I'm seeing huge lenses hehehe) . This falls is part of the Oirase Gorge Stream where the water comes from Lake Towada.


Lake Towada is approximately one hour and a half from Misawa Air Base. I would love to go back here in Oirase Gorge to see this falls and its surrounding during Fall season where the leaves turn to autumn colors. Hmmm, I forgot it's Fall now LOL. But maybe I should wait a couple of weeks to wait until the leaves are totally turn to red and orange colors.

SNOW FESTIVAL- IGLOOS

IGLOOS WHEN IT STARTED TO GET DARK


INSIDE THE BAR DURING DAY TIME




INSIDE THE BAR DURING NIGHT TIME


BARISTA INSIDE THE IGLOO

You can order some beer and wine here. We didn't order, my husband has to drive back home. I didn't get to see the price too maybe expensive (what do you expect in Japan).


IGLOO BAR

I read this as "BOR" but actually it's a bar, I think they don't know how to write cursive letters hahaha



HEARTS

The lights were not turn on yet when I took this shot.



INSIDE THE IGLOO OF HEARTS

This is the walkway inside the igloo, made of bumps :-)






IT SAYS "LOVE"

Can you read L- O- V- E?? I think it's too bright, don't know how to set my camera yet hehehe




SNOW MAN IGLOO


ANOTHER IGLOOS

The left igloo has keyboard on it (sorry but I can't read Japanese) and the right igloo is the picture gallery of Oirase Gorge River



Here's the closer look of that igloo with keyboard


Another close-up


Another one



INSIDE THE PICTURE GALLERY

That was me but the wind blew so I have to cover my face :-)

Lake Towada Snow Festival at Night

Here are another batch of photos from the snow festival. I'm not good in night photography sorry if they didn't turn well. Any tips on night photography are very much appreciated :-)

Ice Sculptures

BIG HEART OF SNOW

CHURCH AND SNOWMAN

SWANS

A HEART AND A STAR

LAKE TOWADA ICE SCULPTURES

These are some of the ice sculptures in Lake Towada Snow Festival that I took pictures of. Sorry but I'm not good in taking pictures with snow, it's either too bright or too dark :-) . Any tips from you guys would be very helpful.

I was so cold and I forgot to take pictures each of the ice sculpture. And it was snowing that day and my camera got some snow flurries and made some of my shots blurry. Oh, it's hard to take pictures when it's snowing I didn't know what to do with my camera.....either I was hiding it in my jacket or in my bag or hanging on my neck hahaha but definitley I was chilling taking pictures and they turned out not well :-(

Lake Towada Snow Festival

Lake Towada Snow Festival is from January 30th to Feb 22nd 2009, from 3:00pm to 9pm. Last Saturday we headed to Lake Towada; this was my second time to see Lake Towada. My first time was when we just got here in Japan and that was July, summer of 2008.

It was snowing in Misawa when we left and even in Lake Towada, a little bit of slippery but we survived although it took us 2 hours to get there. Our first time to drive (the first time we just rode on our friend's van) we just followed the driving directions I got from the internet. And it was very helpful (unlike the directions given by ITT from Misawa base, it sucks shhhh hahaha). It seems that every weekend is snowing here in Misawa but this will not hinder us from going somewhere to see and explore Japan.

We missed the fireworks and the performance of the bands. The performace starts at 7pm and fireworks at 8pm. My husband is still not familiar on the winding road of Lake Towada so we decided to leave early around 6pm.

The second picture is the center stage, where the bands perform. I took this picture coz I was amazed of the snow bike hehehe, pretty cool huh. I don't know how Japanese call this kind of bike.

On their brochure the name of this festival is "Snow and Light Fantavista" these are the only english words I can read from it :-) but still I named my title "Lake Towada Snow Festival" pretty simple and clear :-)

I will post more ice sculptures and igloos from this festival tomorrow.