Festive Light Up, Before the Chill

I'm not a decoration fan and not a big holiday fan either. Anything that equals clutter or things only used for part of the year don't make any sense for me.

The nice thing about living in a smaller city, right next to nature, is all the natural decorations the seasons share with us. It's late fall now and the momiji are quite red, the icho (gingko) leaves have gone from yellow to tan already, and I keep discovering plants with crazy colors. I don't know what they're called, but there's a vine with shiny colorful berries - from silver to deep purple. (photo below)

Previously, we have been to an autumn light-up in a park, the precursor to illuminations here in Japan.

The local one is lighting up the waterfall for the first half of November, so we decided to make the trip up at night. Starting at 5 pm, when it's already mostly dark, there were a handful of lights placed along the taki-michi leading up to Minoh Waterfall. I guess it's a pain to get lights up into the mountains with limited electricity going through.

It was darker than we expected for the 50 minute walk, then randomly we'd be blinded by LEDs pointing a little too much towards us. The lights were mostly fixed on a few locations: the temple and bright red bridge, the bug museum, and the waterfall.

The gate had a blue and purple theme, then off in the distance, the temple had regular white lights on it. 

The bug museum wasn't anything spectacular either.

Along the path, there weren't as many people as we had expected. Every now and then there'd be a bigger group passing us up, as if a train had arrived and they had all come at the same time. The lack of people might be because it was at night or because the leaves hadn't quite changed color yet. We went the last day of the event, November 15th. As you might imagine, it was mostly younger people and couples, although I did see a handful of sleepy kids. The majority of the shops along the way had also closed up for the night.

It's a nice outdoor event for a date, which is I guess what we were doing. Less crowded than when we went during the day for sure.

Of course, what everyone was there to see was the main attraction, the waterfall.

It reminded me of the Teamlab outdoor exhibit I saw in Takeo, Saga a couple years ago. I wonder if their waterfall image projection was taken from this very waterfall?

Coming around the bend towards the waterfall, it looked like something out of Narnia. As usual, the bridge is the prime photo-taking spot, but you can get closer or go up to the viewing area too.

As you can see, the leaves are still green at this point. I haven't been up since to see if they've changed, but around home they have for sure.

I understand why they do this only in early November. By the second half of November, it's too cold to go at night!