Santa Hills is a campsite with a café and a Christmas shop which sells, among other things, life size Santa statues. It is located in Nakagawa Town in the Nasu district of Tochigi.
Its Christmas all year round at Santa Hills, but in late Autumn and early winter they step it up a notch with their annual night illumination. The illumination features a large real Christmas tree decorated in fairy lights, and 20,000 other lights dangled from the trees and fences in the reception area. They have a couple of photo spots too which also have fairy light decoration.
Despite its remote location, Santa Hills attracts hundreds of visitors annually during the Christmas period. The light up is open to the public, but guests of the campsite can also receive a visit from Santa.
Getting there
By public transport: Take a bus from Tohoku Main Line Ujie station, bound for Bato, to Ushirozawa bus stop and walk 30 minutes to Santa Hills.
By car: There are a few interchanges on the Tohoku expressway you can use. The easiest is the Yaita interchange. It takes about 30 to 40 minutes to Santa Hills from that exit.
Lynda Hogan @lynda.hogan
Lynda has been in Japan for 20 years and blogging about Saitama on her personal blog insaitama.com for 14 of them. Despite its central location, just North of Tokyo, Saitama is still quite unknown to the international tourist, but frequented by domestic travelers. It is a great place to experien...
