Uesugi Snow Lantern Festival Guide: Yonezawa's Most Magical Winter Event

The Uesugi Snow Lantern Festival in Yonezawa, Yamagata is one of Tohoku's most magical winter events — and Bianca Valerio is your guided tour inside! 🏮❄️ Held on the second weekend of February each year, the Uesugi Snow Lantern Festival fills Matsugasaki Park with the soft glow of around 200 snow lanterns and 1,000 snow lamps — all surrounding the historic Uesugi Shrine, mausoleum of legendary Japanese warlord Uesugi Kenshin. Bianca Valerio takes you through the full experience: an exquisite lunch at Uesugi Kenshin's former mansion, a guided tour of the Uesugi Shrine grounds, a browse through the omiyage souvenir shops, and the breathtaking evening lantern display at Matsugasaki Park — all in one complete winter day out in Yonezawa City. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🚆 HOW TO GET TO UESUGI SNOW LANTERN FESTIVAL ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ➤ Take the Yamagata Shinkansen from Tokyo to Yonezawa Station, then take the shuttle bus (~¥200, every 20 min) to Matsugasaki Park in about 10 minutes ➤ From Tokyo to Yonezawa Station: ~2.5 hrs by JR Yamagata Shinkansen (covered by JR Pass) ➤ By car: 15 minutes from the Tohoku-Chuo Expressway's Yonezawa-kita IC — limited parking, shuttle bus strongly recommended ➤ Festival dates 2026: February 14 (Sat) & 15 (Sun) | Lighting hours: 5:30 PM – 9:00 PM (Sat) | 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM (Sun) ➤ Admission: FREE to all outdoor areas ➤ Must-eat at the festival: Yonezawa beef skewers, Yonezawa ramen, tamakonnyaku ➤ Tip: Arrive early for the best photo opportunities and to enjoy stage performances before the main crowds arrive — and dress in your warmest layers! ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🌿 ABOUT BIANCA VALERIO ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Bianca Valerio is an award-winning host (emcee) and multi-media artist from the Philippines. Her passion for travel and "education on the fly" inspired this channel — a mindfully curated space advocating for mental, emotional, and physical wellness in today's digital age and hustle culture. ✅ Subscribe for fresh weekly content:    / @biancavalerio   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎬 MORE FROM BIANCA V TRAVELS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🇯🇵 Japan Travel Playlist:    • JAPAN   ❄️ Japan Festivals Playlist:    • JAPAN WINTER FESTIVALS   🙏🏼 Religious Pilgrimage Sites + Holy Week:    • RELIGIOUS PILGRIMAGE SITES + HOLY WEEK PLA...   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🌱 CONNECT WITH BIANCA ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Website: http://biancavalerio.com/about-bianca... Instagram:   / bianca_valerio   Facebook: http://m.me/BiancaValerioOfficial Threads: https://www.threads.net/@bianca_valerio TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@biancavalerioofficial X (Twitter):   / bianca_valerio   📩 Inquiries: [email protected] #UesugiSnowLanternFestival #YonezawaJapan #JapanSnowFestival #UesugiShrine #UesugiKenshin #MatsugasakiPark #TohokuWinterFestival #YamagataJapan #JapanLanternFestival #YonezawaBeef #JapanWinterTravel #JapanFestival #TohokuJapan #BiancaValerio #BiancaVTravels