Winter Lights festival brightens up Nikka Yuko

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on December 10, 2024.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

The ninth annual Winter Lights Festival is now on its way at Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden where attendees can experience a celebration of the seasons within a light display that showcases over 170,00 lights.
Eric Granson, marketing and events manager with the Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden, said they are continuing the theme from last year with the four seasons, but have added some new features.
“We have Haru (Spring), Natsu (Summer),  Aki (Fall), and Fuyu (Winter) and each theme has its own features, as well as coloured theme lights that go into it,” said Granson.
 He said they decided to take last year’s theme and enhance it by adding more lights, more features and more things to enhance those different seasons.
 “It’s always going to be something new for people to enjoy every year. We’re running until Feb. 28th from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. In the month of December, we run from Wednesday to Sunday and in January and February we run Thursday to Saturday,” said Granson.
He said this year they added some free activities for attendees to enjoy while visiting the garden, including Basha Nori (Horse and wagon rides) offered seven times during the festival, with some of them taking place already on Nov. 30 and Dec. 7.
 The next available dates for Basha Nori will be Dec. 21 and 31, Jan. 4, Feb 1 and Feb. 14.
“They are free to attend, people can wait outside the Bunka Centre and it is on a first come first served basis. It takes people around Henderson Lake and all those horses and wagons are decorated in lights,” said Granson.
 He added that in January there will be some performances including the Midnight Channel Jazz Performance on Jan. 18 and Feb. 1 and the Southern Accord Chorus Performances on Jan. 31 from 6:30 to 7 p.m.
“We also have Seijin-no-Hi which is in January and it is free admission to anybody who is 18 years old in 2025 or turning 18 in 2025. It’s called coming of age day and we celebrate that by having cake here and free admission,” said Granson.
He added that they also celebrate Setsubun on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, a seasonal change in Japan, and attendees can throw soya beans at the Oni (ogre) in the garden and that banishes him to start the year fresh.
“Because the events can sometimes be very cold at night time, we have four fire tables located in the garden and each fire table obviously has to have propane, so we work with Gas King as our propane sponsor to keep our fire tables going and keep everyone nice and warm,” said Granson.
He added that even though they have the fire tables they have a temperature limit before they make the decision to close the garden.
“We have a hard cap of -25° with the wind chill. So, if it’s minus 13, but the wind is just howling, it’s cold and it gets to -25 we will close the garden,” said Granson.
 But he explained that if people have purchased tickets to a day that they have to close the garden, those tickets can be used any other day.
 “We will honour those tickets and we can transfer tickets and things like that and work with the customer,” said Granson.

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