Godai Riki-San

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.