Fuji Rock Festival in Naeba Japan

The Fuji Rock Festival takes place annually at Naeba Ski Resort in the Japanese region of Niigita Prefecture. This summer event keeps fans on their feet for three days. It always features some two hundred Japanese and international musicians.

This festival is the greatest outdoor event in Japan. Many people in North America and Europe love the hospitality that the Japanese people offer visitors. The summer sunshine is equally welcoming. Naeba, the venue of the Fuji Rock Festival is near Mt Fuji. This is a stunning picturesque location for such an extremely wonderful festival. A strong emphasis among the organizers of the festival is on cleanliness. Recycling is one of they ways in which every visitor is expected to the realization of this aim of cleanliness.

This festival of great summer fun is always held in three main stages although there are many other minor stages that are spread all over the site. The impact of this is that people are not confined to one location. One may choose Green Stage, which is the main platform of the festival. Alternatively, the smaller stages provide the specific tastes of individuals without interfering with the harmony and order in the whole campsite.

The setting of the stages on different great summer fun locations gives participants a chance to have the opportunity of walking from one venue to the other, something that would have been impossible if participants were to experience all the performances from the Green stage only. In actual sense, the festival therefore is not just about music. It is about full-blown summer fun.

The beauty of the walks that visitors engage in is in the hilly terrain. It is also in the sparkling streams and the experience of being lifted to the top of the mountain by Dragondola. This is not a gondola like any other that you have ever ridden in. No. It is the largest gondola in the world. Once you are on the top of the mountain, you will be overlooking the main venue of the festival. Imagine what a great experience that could be.

The main hub of Fuji Rock Festival is known as Oasis. There are more than 30 food stalls in this site. Whereas the main site has to close once the action is over every night, Oasis remains open until very late into the night. Red Marquee also remains open up to 5 am. It is at Marquee that raving goes on until morning. The site reopens again at exactly 9 am and the festival experience continues for yet another day.

Summer festival parties and performances are the order of day and night during Fuji Rock Festival. During these parties, live music by different bands dominates the atmosphere. Bon-odori is specifically the variety of Japanese traditional folk dance that is played during Thursday night, on the eve of the festival. Draws for the festival are held; food availed in the stalls makes rounds and people dance until late into the night.

Naeba, though a ski resort, offers many accommodation options including hotels, mainshuku, and ryokan. All of them are within a walking distance from the venue of the festival. Since there is high competition for the few available chances, a common practice in recent years has been for the organizers to make arrangements so that people are accommodated in the neighboring ski resorts.

All the accommodation options that are found away from this ski resort can be accessed by shuttle bus and this takes between 40 minutes and one hour. This depends on how far the place is and how close it is to the main highway. A good alternative is spending 2,000 yen to stay at a campsite that is adjacent to the venue of the event. The campsite has all amenities, including toilets, food stalls and showers. About 17,000 visitors who come for this festival always prefer to spend their time in the privacy of this campsite.

Local people prefer to pay for a shuttle bus ride from Echigo-Yuzawa Station to the venue of great summer fun at Naeba Ski resort which is only one hour away.

Many people appreciate the festival in its modern form considering what a disaster the first festival was. The event was planned to take place near Mt. Fuji for two days but on the very first day, a typhoon struck the whole event. Anthony Kiedis, an artist who broke an arm during the typhoon, instant became legendary among many of Fuji Rock festival fans. Many summer festival parties have been held many times in order to honor him. The good thing is that no deaths were reported although many people immediate needed medical attention as a result of hypothermia.

The organizers canceled the second day of that Fuji Rock Festival, which ironically turned out to be very sunny. Their response was partly due to the criticism that was leveled against them for not having made any arrangements for hostile weather conditions. They were not spared scorn for not organizing many buses to provide services between the ski resort and the train station.

Although Fuji Rock Festival has always been held in Naeba since 1999 (which is many miles away from Mt Fuji), its name has never changed. The festival is always great summer fun and no other incident has ever been reported except that initial shake-up.