Some of Japan’s most thrilling fire and ice festivals encourage participants to endure freezing temperatures while dodging burning embers or sprays of icy water. Sometimes naked, occasionally afraid and nearly always inebriated, the Japanese festival-goers at these mid-winter romps sure know how to celebrate.

Come New Year, there will be plenty of Aussie thrill-seekers, skiing and snowboarding in Japan’s powder-snow-coated ski resorts. But the exhilaration they may feel is nothing compared to the buzz the Japanese get when they join with their local community to take part in some of the country’s most extreme fire and ice festivals held during the coldest months of the year.

If you are thinking of booking a winter holiday in Japan, here are three offbeat spectacles well worth a visit enroute to the ski fields.

HADAKA MATSURI – Naked Festival of Saidaiji

In dozens of mid-winter festivals all over the country, Japanese men join together at night to pray for good luck in the coming year. They show how tough they are by stripping off, with the collective body heat generated by drinking, singing and dancing the only barrier against the bitter cold. One of the largest of these freezing frolics is a 500-year-old ritual in which 9000 near-naked men wrestle sumo style in a Buddhist temple moshpit for a lucky talisman.

Dressed in little more than a loincloth, Japanese men gather in Saidaiji Temple in the city of Okayama in western Japan to try their luck in retrieving one of a pair of sacred wooden sticks (shingi) in the belief that the man who snatches a stick will be blessed with a year of good fortune. They prepare for the long night of nudity by drinking sake, chanting and then cleansing themselves via a quick dunking in icy holy water.

Just before midnight, and in complete darkness, priests toss the sticks into the temple’s crowded inner chamber from an upper storey and the crowd goes wild. To gain advantage, many participants hurl themselves from a mezzanine level into the writhing nude melee below. No wonder reports of people being injured, and even crushed, are common.

This chaotic event takes place on the third Saturday in February and entry tickets can be bought for as little as $10. The festival starts in the afternoon, with young boys and even women stripping off to cotton undergarments to parade through the streets or wade through the ice water ponds of the temple, but it is the men who compete for the auspicious good luck charms.

Where: Saidaiji Temple, OkayamaWhen: Third Saturday in February Why: To win a year of good luck Closest Ski Resort: Hyogo ski fields – Pic credits: Photo credit: Okayama Prefectural Government, www.okayama-japan.jp

KASEDORI MATSURI – Fire Protection Festival

Another good reason to drink hot sake while braving sub-zero temperatures is to warm up for the fire protection folk festival held in Kaminoyama in Yamagata prefecture, in northern Japan. Bizarre straw getups that completely cover up the male participants of the Kasedori festival do little to ward off the chill of winter in mid-February or to protect against ever-present snow flurries that blow through the town. But unlike the midnight nudity of Hadaka at least this festival takes place by day.

The participants wear the straw coats and headgear so that they resemble a bird (although, to the untrained eye, they look more like crafty Cousin Its). At least they sound like birds. Chanting a bird’s cry of ‘ka-ka-ka’, the straw-covered birdmen parade through the town’s centre praying for fire prevention and prosperity in the coming year.

This strange repetitive mantra sung by inebriated men in funny costumes is the cue for local people, chiefly old ladies, to suddenly appear and assail the cawing, dancing procession of straw birdmen by throwing buckets of icy cold water on them as they pass by. This dousing symbolizes the extinguishing of flames (although it is hard to imagine a fire with so much snow around). It made perfect sense when the ritual was devised 350 years ago for then buildings were made of wood and heated by open hearths. Clearly it wouldn’t have taken much for one stray ember to ignite a small hamlet.

Where: Kaminoyama City, Yamagata When: February 11th Why: To pray for safety from fire and for businesses to thrive. Closest Ski Resort: Zao Onsen – Pic credit: Photo credit: Yamagata Prefectural Office, www.yamagatakanko.com

DOSOJIN MATSURI – Fire and Ice festival

If you don’t want to watch grown men and women freeze to death, perhaps watching them play with fire on top of an 18-metre high wooden shrine in the centre of a village field buried deep in thick snow drifts would be a more dignified attraction. Villagers get to rug up for the occasion unlike those taking part in the previous festivals.

The Dosojin Fire and Ice festival is held on January 15th in the immensely popular ski resort and historic hot spring town of Nozawa Onsen in central Japan. No one gets naked, but that’s the only sensible thing about Dosojin. The event can only be described as a crazy combat of war-waging villagers who attack the towering shrine. The tough job of defence is left to those men in the village who are 42 or 25, which for some reason, are unlucky ages in Japan.

The festival dates back to 1863 when villagers built a temporary wooden shrine called a shaden to pray to the gods (the dosojin) for a plentiful harvest, good health and fortune in the coming year.

In the days leading up to the festival, the shrine is built by about 100 villagers using logs cut down in October. Even watching the villagers heave the logs down from the surrounding mountain forests and into the town, followed by their intense round-the-clock construction of the tower is a spectacle in itself.

On the night of the 15th, the older men clamber up to sit on the top of the shrine, protecting it (mostly by off-key drunken singing and hurling insults at attackers), while the young guns stand to defend the tower at ground level. The 25 year olds try to thwart the attempts of charging villagers who burnish burning torches of reeds to set the shrine on fire. Fireworks, sake, and of course lots of burning torches feature heavily throughout the long night until the older men claim victory and get off their perch before midnight. Then things really heat up, for if the shrine isn’t already alight, villagers set it ablaze.

The heavy snowfalls that beset this picturesque ski town during winter are clearly no impediment to the popularity of the spectacular Dosojin festival, for tourists travel far and wide to see it, often from neighbouring ski resorts.

They also flock to the village each year for the deep snow, long runs and the plethora of traditional onsen in charming hotels, inns and stand-alone bathhouses, which are fed by 32 natural springs.

But for all the powder snow and steaming therapeutic spas, it’s the spectacular Dosojin fire festival that causes all the mid-January accommodation to be booked out early, so get in asap for this one.

Where: Nozawa Onsen, Nagano.When: January 15th Why: To pray for the town’s rice harvest and general good fortune. Closest Ski Resort: Nozawa Onsen – Pic credit: Photo credit: Nozawa Onsen Tourism Office, www.nozawakanko.jp/english/