Nabana no Sato Illumination

Nabana no Sato is a flower park that spends more than half the year as a light show. Part of the Nagashima Resort complex on the Kiso River delta near Nagoya, it puts on what is regularly called the largest illumination in Japan, running from mid-October through the winter and on to the end of May. Its fixed pieces are the two light tunnels, one of them long and roofed with warm white bulbs, and the great themed field, a landscape of millions of LEDs that changes subject each year and is animated in sequences from a viewing hill. Around them the park's ponds, chapel and beech avenue are lit.

The season is so long that the best time to come is a matter of what you want alongside the lights. Late November brings the park's autumn foliage, lit in its own right, and a weekday then avoids the December crush, when the illumination is at its most crowded. From late February into March the park's plum and early Kawazu cherry trees bloom under the lights, with far smaller crowds. The lights come on at dusk and the park stays open into the evening; the park is closed for two days in early January.

Nabana no Sato is reached by direct bus from Nagoya Station or Kintetsu Nagashima Station, and admission is charged, with the ticket including a spending voucher for the park's restaurants and shops. Expect long queues for the tunnel on December weekends, cold evenings by the river and a polished commercial spectacle rather than a festival; it is at its best treated as an evening from Nagoya.