Omizutori is the commonly used name for Shunie, a series of events held annually from March 1 to 14 at Todaiji Temple. This collection of Buddhist repentance rituals has been held every year for over 1250 years, making it the one of the oldest reoccurring Buddhist events in Japan.

Omizutori is performed at Nigatsudo Hall, a sub complex of Todaiji, which stands not far from the temple’s main hall on the slope of a hill. Nigatsudo literally means “second month hall”, referring to the second month of the lunar calendar, when Omizutori has traditionally been held. The second month of the lunar calendar roughly corresponds to March of the solar calendar.

Among the many different events held during Omizutori, Otaimatsu is the most famous and spectacular. Just after sunset on every night from March 1 through 14, giant torches, ranging in length from six to eight meters, are carried up to Nigatsudo’s balcony and held over the crowd. The burning embers, that shower down from the balcony, are thought to bestow the onlookers with a safe year.

 

Unfortunately i arrived a bit late to Nara (heavy evening traffic) and struggled to get a good sightseeing spot. I suggest you get there about 1 hour before the event to get a good spot. The fire shower show only lasts for about 20 minutes before it’s all over and they do switch the lights off to make the red glow of fire look even better. If you like to make pictures than make sure you either have a tripod (although it does get very crowded so tripods are a bit difficult to setup) … or a very fast lens.

Transport: Take the train to Kintetsu Nara Station and from there you can walk (about 15 minutes) through Nara park to the Nigatsudo-Hall.

Website: Official website is the one of the Todaiji temple. Japan Guide however has an excellent article about the festival details in English (of which i took the liberty to quote quite a bit).

Hina matsuri is also called the “Doll festival” or “Girls Day” … It’s celebrated all over Japan on 3rd of March. Tradition has it that the dolls manifest some spirit after living for prolonged time in the house. And you can’t just throw them away in the trash or that bad spirit is coming back to haunt you. So instead of throwing them into the trash they are properly exorcised and blessed by a priest and set afloat on a boat and sent down a river to the sea, hopefully taking troubles and bad spirits with them.

People have stopped doing this now because of fishermen catching the dolls in their nets. They now send them out to sea, and when the spectators are gone they take the boats out of the water and bring them back to the temple and burn them.

 

The festival starts at noon and only lasts for about 2 hours. The Awashima shrine is famous in the Osaka/Wakayama region mostly for the dolls nowadays, but there are also other quirky collectors objects there (from frogs, tanukis, beckoning cats,etc ) and from around edo-period the shrine has become popular amongst women. The shrine was found back in th 3rd century  dedicated to the god Sukunahikona-no-mikoto (god of medicine and good health).  Women began to make offerings of their underwear to Sukunahikona-no-mikoto, hoping that he would cure them of karyoubyou (literally ‘flower and willow diseases’, a euphemism for STDs) and various other women’s complaints. I actually didn’t knew about this before going and wasn’t looking, but people say you can still see those items at this shrine.

Transport: Take the Nankai express from Osaka Namba station. Get off at Wakayama station, and change trains to the local bound for Kato. The shrine is about twenty minutes walk down to the shore from the station.

Website: The website of the Awashima Jinja is the official one and contains some small information about this festival.

The parents of one of my wife’s teachers happen to life very close to the Daigoji temple and kindly offered us a very conveniently located space to park our car during the Godairiki festival. The mother also went out of her way to surprise us with some fantastic tasting sushi o-bento after we returned from the festival – how very nice of her!

The family clearly loves motorbikes and a quick look into their garage gave us a look at a kind of bike that you don’t see every day! It’s a custom bike named “Zeus” made from a french company called “Side-Bike“. The engine is from Peugeot (which explains the Peugeot logo on the front) and the 2,000cc engine is actually located in the trunk of the side bike and not in the main-bike. I was told there are only about 50 of those bikes driving on the streets of Japan!

 

Some interesting facts about the bike:

• The bike seats 4 people (2 on the bike, 2 in the side car next to each other)
• the side-bike is air conditioned
• the back wheel of the bike also turns if you steer
• The bike is using a normal manual gear box to change gears
• the bike has a reverse gear
• if you use the bike on toll-roads, then you still only have to pay toll-fees for bike, even though the thing handles more like a car

The Godai Rikison Nin-o matsuri (or short just Godairiki) is held each year on February 23 in the nice Daigoji temple area. A mochi-lifting contest (open for anyone to enter) starts at noon and the goal is to lift up a heavy pallet loaded with mochi-rice cake for as long as you can. Women have to push 90kg and men 150kg. There are also other parts to this festival like the burning of used amulets and praying to the temples deity for protection against theft and other misfortunes.

 

Itsuki came along with me this time to see this festival. Actually she was planning on entering the contest, but we were about 10 minutes late for that, pity! It was a beautiful warm spring day (20C which is a bit unusual this early in the year) and a perfect day to go a bit outside the house. Unfortunately the festival itself wasn’t really much to my taste (got a bit boring after seeing 2-3 people lifting the thing) so we just had a short walk around the nice temple area (which happens to be a good sightseeing spot) and then left early for tea. The festival itself however happened to be quite popular, there were more spectators watching the event then i thought there would be!

Transport:  Take the train from JR Kyoto Sta., JR Line to Yamashina Station (6 mins) .. and from there take the Subway Tozai Line (8 mins) and get off at Daigo Station. Parking for cars is very limited.

Website: The Kyoto Tourism Website has some info on it in English and the Daigoji Temple website (all in Japanese) is of course the official website for the festival.

The Saidai-ji Hadaka Matsuri is more famously known as the Okayama Naked Man festival. It’s one of the three most eccentric festivals of Japan. Up to nine thousand men wearing only loincloths (Fundoshi in japanese) struggle fiercely with one another over a pair of lucky sacred sticks (Shingi in Japanese), thrown into the crowd by the priest from a window 4m up. Anyone who luckily gets hold of the shingi and thrusts them upright in a wooden measuring box known as a “Masu” which is heaped with rice is called the lucky man, and is blessed with a year of happiness.

The origins of this festival date back 500 years when worshipers competed to receive paper talismans called Go-o thrown by the priest. These paper talismans were tokens of the completion of New Year ascetic training by the priests. As those people receiving these paper talismans had good things happen to them, the number of people requesting them increased year by year. However, as paper was easily torn, the talismans were changed to the wooden ofuda that we know today.

Shouting out ‘Wasshoi! Wasshoi!’ the almost naked men approach the precincts. Although this festival takes place in winter, the fervor of the men waiting impatiently is so strong that they seem to have difficulty breathing, which is why water is splashed over them. Precisely at midnight, the lights are turned off all at once, the sacred sticks are thrown into the crowd, and the vehement rush to grab the sticks starts. Even if someone is lucky enough to get hold of the sacred sticks, they are quickly snatched away by others, almost like a rugby game.

 

There are paid seats available and if you want to have a good view on the festivals main-event then i suggest you spend a bit of money on them although you need to be quick – they are sold on the Saidaiji website and sell out months before the event. Places to stand are also available and can be bought from the festival committee headquarter during the day of the event.

Transport: Saidai-ji temple is about 10km to the east of Okayama-city. (about 3 hours drive south of Osaka). Traffic moves slowly and roads are usually congested … the best option is to take the train. There are also additional buses driving back to Okayaman JR Station after the event.

Website: The official website (all in Japanese) is the one here and there is also some information about it on the JNTO homepage in English.

How cool is that! – Suntory Japan managed to come up with a sparkling chocolate flavored drink!

The drink almost tastes like normal chocolate milk … except that it has sparkles in it. It has a very rich heavy flavor that makes it almost feel like you are drinking real chocolate milk, except that the after taste does smell very chemical.

A closer look at the ingredients confirm my suspicions:  Syrup, Flavors, Sugar, Caffeine.

I only had a few sips before i gave up on this drink and spilled it down the drain. I love new drinks – but like most of the ones i flavored it doesn’t quite cut it for main stream taste – but keep trying Suntory!

The Nankinmachi Shunsetu Sai (Chinese New Year) is celebrated every year in the month of February in Kobes Chinatown (Nankinmachi quarters). The festivals involves a number of performances showcasing Chinese culture, from dragon dancing to parades of colorful dressed historic figures … and of course a lot of Chinese food.

The festival is mostly centered on a single street holding a little stage for performances in the middle of it. It does get crowded very quickly and i was struggling to move into a good position to shoot some pictures. Might be a good idea to come early if you want a good spot!

 

There are also Chinese New Year festivals in other cities all over Japan. Tokyo has one and especially the Nagasaki lantern festival is known as one of the biggest and nicest Chinese festivals.

Transport: JR Kobe Line, Motomachi Station (3min from Sannomiya Station,25min from Osaka Station) or
Hanshin Main Line, Motomachi Station (3min from Sannomiya Station,30min from Umeda Station). There is also plenty of car parking available if you don’t mind paying the parking fees.

Websites: Nankinmachi has it’s own festival website (all in Japanese).

Setsubun is the day before the beginning of each season, but historically usually refers to the Spring season because after the winter this was kind of thought as the beginning of a new year and therefore an important day to celebrate and pray for good luck.

It’s usually celebrated all over Japan by throwing beans (mame-beans) at each other and shouting “Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi” (Demons out, Luck in!). The Kasuga Taisha in Nara however celebrates Setsubun a bit different than most others by lighting up 1,000 lanterns and without any throwing of beans and shouting.

 

Transport: From Kintetsu Nara Train Station you can walk or take a bus.

Website: The Kasuga Taisha website has information in Japanese.

There are dozens of hadaka (=naked) festivals each year in Japan and today i was visiting this one in Ogaki, in Gifu prefecture. Each year in the afternoon of February 3rd the people of this town hold this event, but if you want there is nothing stopping you to enter this festival too .. just bring some Fundoshi (loin cloth) and some white socks and you’ll be good to join!

The weather this year was absolute fantastic for this kind of festival. It was freezing cold and snowing (sometimes raining) – which makes the act of defying the cold so much more challenging. Nevermind the buckets of cold water that people were throwing to make sure that everyone got wet and freezing (even us photographers in the first row) … i am just glad that my camera survived without any damage.

 

The concept of Hadaka festivals originated in Okayama (the Saidaiji Eyo Hadaka Matsuri) which every years draws more then 10′000 men participating in the event. That said, this festivals in Ogaki was on a much smaller level but never got boring either. It also draws a lot less people (or maybe that was just because of the weather?!) which is always a good thing if you actually try to move around and get some pictures shot rather then wasting time stuck somewhere in the 3rd row behind a crowd.

Transport: 15 minute walk from Yoro Railroad Tomoe Station. Or, take the Meihan Kintetsu bus from JR Ogaki Station to “Noguchi” bus stop. There is plenty of parking space available on the other side of the river should you intend to come by car.

Website: There is some simple website from the Ogaki Festival Committee (all in Japanese) available, but other than that it’s kind of hard to find lot’s of information about it anywhere.

Burning down a mountain is something i wouldn’t want to miss seeing once. Each year in middle of January (i think usually it’s on the 15th – but this year it was on the 23rd) a spectacle like this can be seen in Nara when they burn the dry grass on the Wakakusa Hill.

Wakakusa Yamayaki starts around 5.30pm with purification rituals and prayers for safety during the event, followed by a fireworks display around 6pm. Shortly after the fireworks the dead winter grass at the base of Wakakusa Hill is ignited. This is done by priests dressed as warriors, using torches lit with the sacred flame from Kasuga Shrine. I didn’t see those priests (was arriving in Nara a bit late and got even more delayed trying to find a parking space) but hopefully i will get another chance next year to make some pictures of them too.

The fires spread quickly and by 6.20-6.30pm the whole hill is engulfed in flames. The best view is from the foot of the hill in Nara Park. The spectacle draws in quite a bit of a crowd but because the mountain can be seen from pretty much anywhere in Nara it shouldn’t be a problem to find a good viewing spot with clear sight – i found a good spot that wasn’t too crowded to set up my tripod at the green outside the Todaiji-temple grounds. The whole thing is over rather quickly – so make sure you get to your place before 6pm or you gonna miss out on it.

 

Transport: Within walking distance of the Nara train station. Parking for car is available but i suggest you come early as a lot of spectators arrive after 5pm and parking spaces fill up quickly.

Website: Nara Tourist information has information about it with a schedule of the event (all in Japanese). If you go back to the startpage of this site you will be able to set the language to English but there isn’t much information available except the date.