Kurama No Hi Matsuri (2009)

The Fire festival in Kurama was among the first festivals i went to last year … and also one of the big reasons why i started to like photographing Japanese festivals that much. I was very eager to go see it again this year.

The Kurama No-Hi Matsuri is certainly one of the more spectacular festivals that i know of and still ranks in my top-5 festivals in Japan. If you happen to be in Japan around the 22nd of October then this is the place to be! Unfortunately this year the weather was nice and there were an awful lot of more people coming to enjoy the festival compared to last year. I already thought that last year was crowded, but this year it was twice as bad. It makes photographing the event somewhat of an challenge, as you can’t really move around freely for the best spots.

Transport: The roads to the village are closed for cars during the festival. There is not much space for parking in this little town and the small road connecting the town in the hills probably wouldn’t be able to cope with all the people coming to visit this festival. The only way to Kurama is by train (about 30 minutes ride) from Demachi-Yanagi Station on the Eizan Dentetsu Kurama Line. Demachi-Yanagi Station is about 15 minutes from JR Kyoto Station.

Website: The official website (all in Japanese) is the one of the Yuki-Jinja Shrine, that celebrates and organizes this event. Both the Kyoto tourist pages as well as the Japan Tourism pages also have some entries on the festivals in english. The Kyoto Shimbun newspaper website (japanese) features some videos of the event.