Snow settles on the thatch. Ouchijuku was a post town once, a way station on the road that linked Aizu to Nikko, where travelers stopped, ate, slept, and moved on. The road's importance faded centuries ago, and the town, forgotten, simply stayed as it was: a single street lined with thatched-roof houses, the streetscape of the Edo period left almost untouched. In February the snow festival comes. Lanterns are carved from packed snow and lit from within, and at dusk the white road fills with small uneven points of orange light, as if the village had decided to answer the dark in its own quiet handwriting. Fireworks rise—modest ones, the fireworks of snow country—and color scatters across white roofs, a white road, a white dark. It would be easy to mistake this for a scene arranged for visitors, and in part it is. But people still live here, and still cross each winter the way their grandparents did, with the snow rather than against it. The festival is lovely. The ordinary life beneath it is lovelier.