About This Festival
Nabana no Sato, a theme park devoted to flowers, greenery, and cuisine inside Nagashima Resort in Kuwana City, Mie Prefecture, spreads across roughly 32.2 hectares. Dotted throughout the grounds are the Begonia Garden conservatory, the day-spa Sato-no-Yu, seasonal flower fields, and a craft-beer restaurant, forming a multifaceted garden where visitors can admire vibrant plants and rustic scenery by day and enjoy illuminated ponds and greenhouses after dusk.
Since opening in 1998 under the banner of "coexistence between people and nature," the park has hosted a variety of flower festivals—among them the Tulip Festival and the Hydrangea & Iris Festival—making it a popular day-trip destination from the Nagoya area.
Its greatest attraction is the winter-only Winter Illumination. Each year a new main-theme area debuts, pursuing the pure glow and warmth of individual bulbs rather than relying on projection mapping. For the 2024–2025 season, the theme is "Magnificent Mt. Fuji," depicted solely with LEDs in a colossal tableau about 35 meters high and 155 meters wide. Previous seasons featured "Golden Pyramid," "Sky Ship," and "Sea of Clouds," establishing the event as one of the world's premier illumination shows and heightening anticipation for each new edition.
Additional highlights include the River of Light, one of Japan's largest water-borne displays, where LEDs dynamically recreate waterfalls and flowing streams whose reflections shimmer across the surface, and the 200-meter Flower Corridor, a tunnel of warm-toned petals of light that earned a spot in the book 100 Places to Visit Before You Die: The World's Most Beautiful Sceneries.
Nabana no Sato lies less than an hour from Nagoya by Kintetsu Railway followed by a short local-bus ride. Because the park sits along the Kiso, Nagara, and Ibi Rivers, winter evenings can be brisk, so dress warmly and immerse yourself in an unforgettable night of lights.
