Zao Snow Monsters Light-up (Zao Juhyo Festival)

The juhyo of Zao are trees that have disappeared. Through the winter, Siberian winds drive supercooled droplets onto the firs of the upper slopes, layer upon layer, until each tree is a hulking white figure that the Japanese call a snow monster. Thousands of them stand on the ridge above Zao Onsen, and the Zao Ropeway carries visitors up through them to the summit station at Jizo Sancho. On selected nights in winter the monsters are floodlit in changing colours, and the ride up through the frozen forest in the dark is the centrepiece of the Zao Juhyo Festival.

The 2026/27 light-up runs on 31 nights between 26 December 2026 and 23 February 2027, from 17:00 to 21:00: the turn of the year (26, 27, 30 and 31 December and 1 to 3 January), every weekend from 9 January to 7 February, and two longer runs on 10 to 14 and 19 to 23 February. The monsters are at their fullest in early to mid-February, before the thaw begins to strip them. Take the last ropeway up, which leaves the base station at 19:45, to see them in full darkness, and dress for a summit that is far colder and windier than the village. Only groups of twenty or more need a reservation.

Zao Onsen is a bus ride from Yamagata Station, itself on the Yamagata Shinkansen from Tokyo, and it is a ski resort and hot-spring town in its own right, so the light-up is easily folded into a day on the slopes and an evening in the sulphur baths. The ropeway fare is separate from any ski pass and the night ride is ticketed on its own. Expect queues at the base station, a genuinely alpine cold at the top and a spectacle that vanishes in poor visibility; the operator calls a night off in bad weather or if the frost has fallen from the trees.