Shiojiri Things to Do

You can go to one of the biggie festivals in Kyoto or Aomori, but you'll probably be pushed to the back of the crowd where all of your pictures will have a sea of heads in them. It's interesting, it's just not as interesting as finding the smaller, less crowded festivals. Every town in Japan has summer festivals associated with it's shrines. This is a great place to see young girls in yukatas, families having fun, old men drinking sake, the ceremony to make offerings to the gods, and the raucous parade of palanquins through the town and back up the hill to the shrine.
The difficult thing is that most people don't know when or where these festivals are happening, but at Shiojiri, it's the second or third weekend of July.