Toga

**Winter is the season and the obstacle.** The soba festival is a winter event and this is heavy snow country. Winter tyres are not optional and the bus is the safer choice from Etchu-Yatsuo. **Watch the ishikachi if you are here in autumn.** The re-enactment of foundation compaction for a gassho house — a weighted timber hauled and dropped from a frame — explains how these buildings stand up, and you will not see it at Shirakawa-go or Gokayama. **The theatre is real.** A significant experimental company is based here with performance spaces converted from farmhouses, and its summer festival draws an international audience to a village of a few hundred people. **Confirm dates.** Festival dates shift year to year and events have been cancelled in the past. Check with Nanto tourism rather than assuming a fixed weekend. **There is very little here otherwise.** No convenience stores to speak of, limited food outside events, and long distances between anything. Come for an event or come prepared.