A traditional Japanese winter lights festival held right here in Lethbridge has seen success the last couple of months.

The Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden’s version of a winter lights festival and people around the community have been attending in large numbers.

After many years of planning and organizing, the group was finally able to host the event.

James Phelan, marketing coordinator for Nikka Yuko, says people in the community have been showing support for the festival since it opened in December.

“It’s been unbelievable, in December we had well over 6,000 people through our gate and I think the staff and a lot of the city got caught up in the magic of this festival,” he said.

Phelan says the biggest obstacle they faced was with keeping up with Japanese carpentry traditions in the garden which includes not using nails or screws.

Lots of planning went into the first year of the festival but Phelan says the staff is already getting excited about planning year two which they want to be bigger and better.

“We’re still excited to be doing the festival but we’re almost more excited about planning next years. We can see the direction of where the festival is going to go,” he said.

With just a few days left until they are turned off for the year, people are still heading to the Japanese Garden for the winter lights festival.

Dale Leffingwell is a regular at the Japanese Garden and he has been impressed with the amount of work that went into creating the event.

“It’s first class really. We better have this festival every year from now on because this is unbelievable, it’s magical really,” he said.

The display opened before the Christmas season and features over 96,000 lights that have been attracting people from the community.

For more information on times and admission prices, visit nikkayuko.com.