Shiojiri Travel Guide

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.

When travelling through Japan, many people find their wallet shrinks very fast. Nearly everything is more expensive than mainland Asia. But it's still possible to get good food cheap, through street vendors. You may not find them often, but in Ueno Park, at festivals, or major tourist spots you'll frequently see the red and white striped banners of takoyaki (fried octopus balls), ramen, or, my favorite, yakisoba (fried noodles). Pick up a pack for a few hundred yen to tide you over to the next meal. Or, find a 7-11 and get some shee-chicken onigiri (tuna rice balls) and a snickers bar.

Favorite thing: If you visit Japan during March or April, you'll notice that many stores or homes have a set of dolls or a miniature samurai helmet on display. This is to celebrate Girl's and Boy's Day.
Girl's Day was originally a ceremony to cleanse the home or town in the spring. Young girls sent paper dolls floating down the stream. Eventually, families started displaying dolls in the homes instead. In the Edo Period, families competed to see who could buy the most expensive dolls set. Nowadays, grandparents spend about 1,000-2,000 US$ on a new doll set when their granddaughter is born. This is displayed in the weeks before Girl's Day (March in most of Japan, April in Nagano and other rural areas). The superstition is that if you don't put away the set right after the holiday, the girl will get married late.
Boy's Day started more recently as a mirror of Girl's Day, and occurs one month after. The helmets are less expensive, and the holiday less publicized.