Nikka Yuko hosting traditional New Year’s Eve celebrations

The Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden’s Winter Light Festival is a great experience to check out in Lethbridge for those looking to get the full holiday immersion. 

With twinkling lights decorating almost every surface the sights are breathtaking, creating the perfect holiday moment for everyone to wander through. 

“The wonderful thing about our Winter Festival is that we are constantly adding new sorts of things for our guests to enjoy,” said Eric Granson, marketing manager at the Garden. “We have added two new ice sculptures from Frozen Memories in Calgary. As well as adding this year our dome experience, we do a Northern Lights experience on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and our Sakura (cherry blossom) display, which is on Thursdays and Saturdays.”

The Kamakura (Igloo) uses 360-degree video for visitors to enjoy the dome’s ceiling as images are projected across it. Visitors can gaze up at the projections of traditional Japanese and Canadian culture and environments. 

The Winter Light Festival is in its seventh year of operating, expanding and growing with every iteration. 

“We set it up and take it down every year and it’s a lot of work, we have roughly about 170,000 lights up. It is amazing compared to where we started, which was about 70,000. That compared to where we are now, we are constantly growing,” said Granson. “We are evolving and making a year-round attraction. Not something that everybody shows up and they are like ‘oh we have seen this before already.’ We want people to come back and be like ‘wow, this is new.’ Making that their new yearly tradition. That is our hope this year and the years that follow.”

Always looking to expand and enhance the visitor experience, Nikka Yuko will host a New Years Eve night with plenty of fun for those in attendance. 

“New Year’s we have a thing called Joya-no-Kane (New Year’s Eve Bell) which is on December 31. We are going to be doing some horse and wagon rides, discounts on tickets to encompass the event and everything going on. In addition to that, between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. is free admission for the ringing of the bell and bringing in the New Year,” said Granson.

The Joya-no-Kane will ring 108 times to cleanse the new year, a traditional Buddhist New Year’s service, with basha nori (horse and wagon) rides to encapsulate the night. “We recommend everyone dress accordingly because we won’t be closing unless it is extreme weather,” said Granson. “We are open from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and then from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. is our special time that we can bring in the New Year. So we definitely welcome everybody that hasn’t had a chance yet to come out that day for sure.”