In the last days of February, deep in the snow country of Fukui, a castle town does something unexpected: it throws a party. The Katsuyama Sagicho Matsuri has marked the turn toward spring for some three hundred years, and it refuses the solemnity you might expect of a shrine rite in the snow. On twelve wooden towers raised through the town, adults in bright red under-kimono dance and clown to shamisen and drums — the 'floating drums,' locals call the style, and the phrase catches the mood, giddy and weightless against the white streets. Paper streamers in loud colors snap in the cold wind. Each neighborhood competes to be the most cheerfully unhinged, and the judging is taken exactly as seriously as it should be. Then, on the final night, the festival burns: the sacred decorations go onto the dondo fires, flames stand up out of the snow, and winter is formally shown the door. Okuetsu's winters are among the longest and deepest in Honshu. Perhaps that is the secret — here, the gaiety is precisely proportional to the snow.