Nozawa Onsen

The event of the year, held every January 15. Families with boys born in the last year build elaborate umbrella-like totem polems called hatsuakarikago, while all 40- to 42-year-old men in the village built a wooden shrine called shaden, both nearly 10 m tall. On the night of the festival, a ritual battle ensues after a torch procession, and the shrine and the poles are ceremonially burned amid much merriment and consumption of sake.