Two of Aomori Prefecture’s large float festivals run in the same week of August, and their names differ by one letter. The city of Aomori stages the Nebuta Matsuri from 2 to 7 August every year. The city of Hirosaki, inland in the same prefecture, stages the Neputa Matsuri from 1 to 7 August every year. Each organiser publishes its own fixed period, each runs its only daytime parade on 7 August, and the two overlap on six dates. Getting the spelling and the start date right is the first thing to pin down when planning an early-August trip to the prefecture.
Aomori’s Nebuta runs 2 to 7 August, and Hirosaki’s Neputa starts a day earlier
The Aomori Nebuta Matsuri official site states the period as 2 August to 7 August every year and then splits the six days by what parades and when. On the 2nd and 3rd the evening programme is children’s nebuta together with large nebuta. On the 4th, 5th and 6th the evening programme is large nebuta only. On the 7th the large nebuta parade runs in the daytime, and the evening brings the Aomori Fireworks Display with nebuta carried on the water. So the festival’s only daytime parade and its only fireworks fall on the same final day. The organiser’s schedule page puts clock times to that outline: the children’s nebuta lead off at 19:00 on the 2nd and 3rd, the large nebuta at 18:45 from the 4th to the 6th, and the daytime parade at 13:00 on the 7th, with the 72nd Aomori Fireworks Display and the floats on the water at Aomori Port from 19:15 to about 21:00. The same page also lists an eve festival on 1 August, outside the published period, at the Aoi Umi Park stage from 17:00 to 21:00 as planned, with a note that in 2026 it was to begin at 10:00.
Hirosaki’s organiser gives the 2026 dates as Saturday 1 August to Friday 7 August, and adds the standing rule beneath them: the Hirosaki Neputa Matsuri period is 1 to 7 August every year. The seven days are split by route rather than by float size. From 1 to 4 August the floats run the Dotemachi course from 19:00. On 5 and 6 August they run the Ekimae course, in front of the station, from 19:00. On 7 August they run a Dotemachi morning course from 10:00. Hirosaki’s own daytime parade therefore falls on 7 August as well.
| Published detail | Aomori Nebuta Matsuri | Hirosaki Neputa Matsuri |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed annual period | 2 to 7 August | 1 to 7 August |
| Number of days | 6 | 7 |
| Evening start time printed | 19:00 on 2 and 3 August, 18:45 on 4 to 6 August | 19:00 on 1 to 6 August |
| Daytime parade | 7 August, from 13:00 | 7 August, from 10:00 |
| Route change during the festival | Start points change: two for large nebuta on 2 to 6 August, one on 7 August | Dotemachi on 1 to 4 August, Ekimae on 5 and 6 August |
| Fireworks named in the schedule | Aomori Fireworks Display on the evening of 7 August | No display named; a firework at 17:00 signals that the parade runs |
| Largest float size published | Not printed on the schedule page or in the preservation standard | Over nine metres |
Counting the shared dates in the first row gives six: 2 August through 7 August. That count is ours. Where the table says a detail is not printed, the organiser’s own page does not carry it, which is not the same as the festival lacking it.
Hirosaki publishes a 17:00 decision rule, and a firework that announces the answer
Hirosaki’s outline sets out what happens in bad weather in a short block of rules. The joint parade goes ahead in rain. When a warning or advisory for heavy rain, storm or thunder is in force, the final decision is made at 17:00. And the decision is published in a way a visitor standing in the street can read: if fireworks are set off at 17:00, the parade runs. Cancellations are announced on the website and social media.
Two further rules are printed on the same page. Unmanned aircraft need permission to fly at all, and flying them around the parade course and the viewing areas is prohibited because of the risk of a fall causing an accident; visitors who spot one are asked to tell the nearest staff member. Spectators are asked not to block pavements or tactile paving. The paid seating has its own dated calendar for 2026: group sales for special viewing seats from 1 April, advance reservations for travel agencies and groups of ten or more from 1 April, and free invitations for local primary-school judging seats from 26 June.
Hirosaki also describes the order of its parade. The floats run smallest first, and the large ones come later in the procession; behind each float follows a group of flute and drum players. The page notes that the festival is certified among the 100 Soundscapes of Japan to be preserved, which is a sound designation rather than a visual one.
The normals give 567 centimetres of snowfall and 119.5 snow days a year
Aomori’s climate normals are calculated over 1991 to 2020, and every one of the nineteen columns carries that same period and 30 years of data. Three of them — mean cloud amount, fog days and thunder days — also carry the page’s @ mark, which the legend defines as a reference value that cannot be used for differences from or ratios to the normal; the snow, temperature, precipitation and sunshine columns do not carry it. The snow columns carry the figures a winter visitor is looking for. Total snowfall depth is 567 centimetres across the year. The largest single-day snowfall total in the normals is 32 centimetres. Normal maximum snow depth is 101 centimetres for the year. Snow days average 119.5 a year, which is close to one day in three by our own division.
| Month | Snowfall depth, total (cm) | Maximum snow depth (cm) | Snow days | Mean temperature (°C) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 195 | 83 | 29.6 | minus 0.9 |
| February | 141 | 97 | 26.1 | minus 0.4 |
| March | 64 | 70 | 22.1 | 2.8 |
| April | 4 | 9 | 5.7 | 8.5 |
| October | Dash printed | Dash printed | 0.2 | 13.5 |
| November | 23 | 14 | 10.2 | 7.2 |
| December | 143 | 51 | 26.0 | 1.4 |
| Year | 567 | 101 | 119.5 | 10.7 |
All twelve months carry a snow-day figure, and the seven from October to April are the ones above zero; May to September print 0.0. Six months carry a snowfall figure, and the three snow columns print a dash from May to October, which the agency’s key to the value columns defines as the phenomenon not occurring, which makes October the one month with a snow-day figure above zero and no snowfall figure. Those counts are ours, read off the table. January is the coldest month on all three temperature columns, at a monthly mean of minus 0.9 degrees, a mean daily maximum of 1.8 and a mean daily minimum of minus 3.5. February’s normal maximum snow depth, at 97 centimetres, stands above January’s 83 even though January receives more snowfall; both columns are printed side by side in the same table. August is the warmest month at a mean of 23.5 degrees with a mean daily maximum of 27.8.
January gets 48.5 hours of sunshine, against May’s 201.4
Seven more columns of the same table bear on a winter trip. Annual sunshine at Aomori is 1,589.2 hours. The lowest month is January at 48.5 hours and the second lowest December at 50.4; the highest is May at 201.4 hours. Dividing the May figure by the January figure gives a ratio above four, by our own arithmetic. Annual precipitation is 1,350.7 millimetres, and the wettest month is December at 155.2 millimetres, ahead of August’s 142.0 and January’s 139.9; the driest is April at 68.7. Mean relative humidity is 75 per cent over the year, mean wind speed 3.7 metres per second, with the column headed most frequent direction giving south-west for January, February, March, April, May, August, November and December, and the normals give 15.2 thunder days and 8.7 fog days a year, both of them @ reference values.
The register falls at every step of twenty-one annual counts, and households peaked in 2021
Aomori City publishes its resident-register population on an April 1 basis, one row a year. The latest row, for 1 April 2026, gives 119,802 men, 137,256 women, a total of 257,058 and 135,028 households. The two sex columns add to the printed total, and women outnumber men by 17,454 — both checks are ours. The page was updated on 13 October 2026.
The same table runs back to 1 April 2006, when the register held 313,733 people in 129,598 households. Across the twenty-one rows the population column falls at every step, for a drop of 56,675 people, while the household column rises by 5,430. Those two figures are our own subtractions from the first and last rows. The household column does not fall in step with the population: it climbs to a high of 137,018 in 2021 and declines after that, so the peak household count arrived fifteen years after the peak population in this table.
One footing caveat belongs with those numbers, and the city prints it. A legal change meant that from July 2012 foreign residents are recorded in the resident register, so the attached files from that date include foreign population and households while the earlier files exclude them. The 2006 and 2026 rows therefore do not count exactly the same set of people, and the 56,675 figure above spans that change. The city also notes that figures up to March 2014 use the last day of the month as the reference date, while the monthly migration tables are compiled separately from births, deaths, in-migration and out-migration.
What this leaves a visitor with is a city that is smaller every year and a prefecture whose two float festivals are pinned to calendar dates rather than to a weekend. For how the agency’s records treat the colder island to the north, see Hokkaido’s low-temperature records. The dates do not move: 1 August in Hirosaki, 2 August in Aomori, and 7 August for the daytime parade in both.
Sources Checked
Aomori Nebuta Matsuri Executive Committee — official site
Confirmed that the festival period is 2 August to 7 August every year; that the evening programme on the 2nd and 3rd is children’s nebuta and large nebuta, that the evening programme on the 4th, 5th and 6th is large nebuta, and that on the 7th the large nebuta parade runs in the daytime with the Aomori Fireworks Display and nebuta carried on the water in the evening; and that the secretariat is the Aomori Tourism and Convention Association at 1-2-18 Shinmachi, Aomori.
https://www.nebuta.jp/
Aomori Nebuta Matsuri — schedule and parade course
Confirmed the eve festival on 1 August from 17:00 to 21:00 as planned at the Aoi Umi Park special stage, with a note that 2026 was to start at 10:00; the children’s nebuta lead departure at 19:00 on 2 and 3 August with about ten children’s and about fifteen large nebuta; the large nebuta lead departure at 18:45 from 4 to 6 August with about twenty floats; the large nebuta lead departure at 13:00 on 7 August; the 72nd Aomori Fireworks Display and nebuta on the water at Aomori Port from 19:15 to about 21:00; that judging runs from 2 to 5 August with the awards announced on 6 August; that on 2 to 6 August the large nebuta start from two points and run the course anticlockwise, while on 7 August the award-winning floats lead from the Shinmachi and Yanagimachi crossing; and that no float dimension is printed on the page.
https://www.nebuta.jp/info/schedule/schedule.html
Aomori Nebuta Matsuri — preservation and transmission standard
Confirmed that the standard, adopted on 19 January 2009, sets the float as a three-dimensional kumi-nebuta built as a lantern of paper over a wood and wire frame and lit from inside, with the light not flashing and neither the float nor the cart beneath it driven by a machine; that the hayashi instruments are the drum, the flute and the hand gong; and that the standard prints no dimension for a float.
https://www.nebuta.jp/know/docs/densyo.pdf
Hirosaki Tourism and Convention Association — Hirosaki Neputa Matsuri
Confirmed the 2026 period of Saturday 1 August to Friday 7 August and the statement that the festival period is 1 to 7 August every year; that 1 to 4 August use the Dotemachi course from 19:00, 5 and 6 August the Ekimae course from 19:00, and 7 August a Dotemachi morning course from 10:00; that the joint parade goes ahead in rain, that when a warning or advisory for heavy rain, storm or thunder is in force the final decision is made at 17:00, and that if fireworks are set off at 17:00 the parade runs, with cancellations announced on the website and social media; that floats run from the smaller ones first with the large ones later and a group of flute and drum players following each float; that the largest floats exceed nine metres; that unmanned aircraft require permission and are prohibited around the parade course and viewing areas because of the risk of a fall causing an accident; that spectators are asked not to block pavements or tactile paving; that the festival is certified among the 100 Soundscapes of Japan to be preserved; and the paid-seating dates of group sales for special viewing seats from 1 April 2026, advance reservations for travel agencies and groups of ten or more from 1 April 2026, and free invitations for local primary-school judging seats from 26 June 2026.
https://www.hirosaki-kanko.or.jp/edit.html?id=cat02_summer_neputa
Japan Meteorological Agency — climate normals for Aomori
Confirmed that all nineteen columns carry the statistical period 1991 to 2020 with 30 years of data; the monthly mean, mean daily maximum and mean daily minimum temperatures of minus 0.9, 1.8 and minus 3.5 degrees for January and 23.5, 27.8 and 20.0 degrees for August, with annual figures of 10.7, 14.9 and 7.1; annual precipitation of 1,350.7 millimetres with 155.2 in December, 142.0 in August, 139.9 in January and 68.7 in April; annual sunshine of 1,589.2 hours with 48.5 in January, 50.4 in December and 201.4 in May; annual mean relative humidity of 75 per cent; annual mean wind speed of 3.7 metres per second with south-west the most frequent direction in January, February, March, April, May, August, November and December; annual thunder days of 15.2 and fog days of 8.7, both carrying the @ reference-value mark; total snowfall depth of 567 centimetres for the year with 195 in January, 141 in February, 64 in March, 4 in April, 23 in November and 143 in December; a largest daily snowfall total of 32 centimetres for the year; maximum snow depth of 101 centimetres for the year with 83 in January, 97 in February, 70 in March, 9 in April, 14 in November and 51 in December; annual snow days of 119.5 with 29.6 in January, 26.1 in February, 22.1 in March, 5.7 in April, 0.2 in October, 10.2 in November and 26.0 in December; and that the months from May to October print a dash in the snowfall and snow-depth columns, while the snow-day column prints 0.0 from May to September.
https://www.data.jma.go.jp/stats/etrn/view/nml_sfc_ym.php?prec_no=31&block_no=47575
Aomori City — population and households, resident basic register
Confirmed that the table is compiled on an April 1 reference date; that the 2026 row gives 119,802 men, 137,256 women, a total of 257,058 and 135,028 households; that the 2006 row gives a total of 313,733 and 129,598 households; that the population column falls at every step across the twenty-one rows; that the household column reaches 137,018 in 2021 and declines afterwards; that the page was updated on 13 October 2026; that from July 2012 foreign residents are included in the resident basic register following a legal change, so the attached files from that date include foreign population and households; that figures up to March 2014 use the last day of the month as the reference date; and that the monthly migration tables are compiled from births, deaths, in-migration and out-migration.
https://www.city.aomori.aomori.jp/shisei/toukei/1006137.html
Last updated: October 2026
