6-Month Nightly "Toyako Long-Run Fireworks", "Hakodate Port Festival (Squid Dance)", "Furano Bellybutton Festival" & "Akan Marimo Matsuri"

Schedule: 2026 | Location: Hokkaido (Danau Toya, Hakodate, Furano & Danau Akan)

Along the volcanic caldera shores of Lake Toya, the "Toyako Long-Run Fireworks Festival" holds the distinction of being Japan's longest-running continuous fireworks display, lighting up the sky every single night for six full months from late April through October 31 (over 180 consecutive nights). Promptly at 8:45 PM each evening, pyrotechnic barges cruise steadily along the two-kilometer lakeside promenade in front of Toyako Onsen's resort hotels while launching hundreds of aerial shells, allowing every visitor to enjoy an unobstructed front-row view from their hotel balcony, outdoor hot-spring bath, or aboard the medieval castle-shaped sightseeing boat "Espoir." From August 1 to 5 each summer, the southern port city of Hakodate erupts into its grandest celebration, the "Hakodate Port Festival" (Hakodate Minato Matsuri), founded in 1935 to revive civic spirits following the Great Hakodate Fire. The festival opens with a massive choreographed musical fireworks extravaganza over Hakodate Bay, followed by the "Wasshoi Hakodate" street parade where over 20,000 citizens and spontaneous onlookers dance through the city performing the infectious "Hakodate Ika Odori" (Squid Dance)—mimicking the triangular fins and swimming motion of Hakodate's signature squid. At the exact geographic center of Hokkaido, Furano celebrates its nickname as the "Bellybutton of Hokkaido" every July 28–29 with the hilarious "Hokkai Heso Matsuri" (Hokkaido Bellybutton Festival): thousands of dancers paint expressive oversized faces ("Zura") directly onto their bare stomachs, conceal their actual heads beneath wide straw hats, andshimmy down the streets to folk rhythms. Conversely, every October at Lake Akan, the indigenous Ainu community hosts the solemn three-day "Akan Marimo Festival"—offering torchlit prayers to nature spirits and ceremonially returning sacred spherical green Marimo algae balls to the lake depths aboard dugout canoes.