The Niihama Taiko Matsuri is held on the 16-18th of October. Niihama City is located right next to Saijo City and is competing for festival visitors with the Saijo Matsuri which is held around the same time.

Each of 50 neighborhoods in Niihama has its own Taiko float, which consists of an decorated wooden center frame, covered in panels made of gold thread. The column is covered with a fabric top (usually red and white), which symbolically represents the sun; it is surrounded by long black cushions folded into a figure of 8 with hanging tassels, representing the clouds and rain. The design is intended to show gratitude for a good harvest. Gold dragons adorn the top panels of the float while the lower panels show traditional buildings, animals or legends. Inside the float, a drummer beats a deep booming taiko drum, providing the rhythm that guides 150 men below, who carry the float by four long wooden beams at the float’s base. Four crew members stand on the beams and control the rest of the crew with flags, whistles and chants while four more are perched precariously on the top some 5.4 m above ground.

The most spectacular of these happens at Utsunomiya Jinja near Yamane Ground where several floats are carried up many steps at about 4am to a small shrine on the top of a hill. For three days straight (October 16-18), 12 to 14 hours per day, they carry the floats in parades all over the city and park them for display, drinking copious amounts of sake. Sake bottlers even release commemorative bottles with labels featuring pictures of various float-carrying teams.

There is also a bit of fighting involved every now and then. The Taiko-carrying teams are known to start fights, in which two teams ram their floats into each other until one or both floats are destroyed.

 

Website: Niihama City website has the official information about the festival (all in Japanese).

Transport: Yamane Ground – the place where most of the festival is being held is a bit far away from public transport. Probably a taxi from Niihama train station is the best option. Parking is somewhat limited on the side of the street but possible.

Not everybody knows about the Saijo festival, but it is gaining in popularity. The festival is held from the 14th to the 17th of October and up to 77 portable shrines dedicated to 4 local shrines will be paraded through the streets and districts of the city.

The festivals features 3 different kind of floats:

• ‘Mikoshi‘ with two big wheels covered in fine cloth decorated with intricate golden dragon stitch-work.
• ‘Taikodai‘ with a weight of up to 2.5 tons but without wheels as it is carried aloft by as many as 150 men.
• … and the ‘Danjiri‘, up to 5 metres in height and adorned with beautiful carvings of traditional Japanese scenes.

The highlight of the festival is happening on the evening of the 16th of October with a number of the gorgeous floats getting carried into the Kamo River.

Besides this highlighted event on the 16th, there are also individual festivals held at each of the four Shrines: at Kamo Shrine on Oct. 10th & 11th; at Iwaoka Shrine on Oct. 14th & 15th; at Isono Shrine on Oct. 15th & 16th; and at Iizumi Shrine on Oct. 16th & 17th.

 

Website: Saijo City has a website about the festival.

Transport: JR Yosan Line to Iyo-Saijo Sta., and then walk 20 min. to the Kamo River or come by car – there is plenty of free parking available on the west side of the river bank.

The Nada Kenka(=fighting) Matsuri in Himeji is famous in Japan for being one of the rougher festivals on a similar level to the Kishiwada Danjiri. It is dangerous, risky, sometimes frightening, yet colourful and beautiful all at the same time. This year one person died (probably crushed by one of the floats tipping over) and i saw ambulance cars arriving and leaving the place on a frequent interval.

The festival takes place each year on the 14th and 15th of October in the are around Nada. On the first day each of the 7 districts has a team of people carrying a 1 tonne heavy nicely decorated shrine (and several not so delicate shrines that can be banged, trashed and damaged in the real fights) to a ground located between step hills.

On the second day of the festival the real fighting action happens. The group of men are crashing and banging the shrines into each other and every so often they tend to fall and roll into the crowd. Unfortunately i was a bit far away from this action to make any good pictures. If you happen to go to this festival then make sure you bring a good zoom lens with you (300mm or more) as the festival place is very crowded and you will struggle to get any good seats close to the action.

 

Transport: About 3 minutes’ walk from Shirahama-no-miya Station. Shirahama-no-miya Station is about 10 minutes from Sanyo Himeji Station on the Sanyo Dentetsu Honsen Line.

This Danjiri festival in Furuichi is one of those little and unknown gems that not many people seem to know about. There are about 5 danjiri floats involved and about 40 food stalls or so .. but even though it’s a bit on the small side the festival is still very much fun to watch especially because of the people involved in it! There seems to be a good mix of men and females on the floats and a lot of energy. Historically women have been considered “un-clean” and not allowed on danjiris in old times, but Habikino certainly looks like it got rid of those old nonsense superstitions.

The festival happens every year on the second saturday/sunday in October.

 

Transport: It’s directly next to the Furuichi train station in Habikino.

Website:  There is a website dedicated to this festival here but it doesn’t really contain much information and most of the links seem to be outdated.

Back in 1638 a salt seller named Jihei from Kajiya-cho (Blacksmiths town) was having fun dancing with a tanuki (a raccoon-dog) mask and that is how the festival in Otsu started. Over the years the festival evolved and instead of just people dancing in raccoon masks they also added 3-wheeled floats (called “Hiki-yama”) to the event.

On “Yoi-miya” evening (held each year on a Saturday in early October) they exhibit the floats in the streets of the old town and the next day there is a parade with them. Merchants in the streets open their houses to the public and exhibit old artwork and treasures.

 

The evening before the parade reminded me very much of the Yoiyama nights in the Kyoto Gion Matsuri … just a bit on a smaller scale (which is actually a good thing). The floats are all beautifully decorated with golden ornaments and Gobelin tapestry and the old part of town in Otsu with the many shops just looks nice and interesting. The Otsu matsuri made it on my top-5 list for festivals and i am looking forward to next years one!

Transport: 5 minutes walk down the hill from Otsu-station.

Website: The festival has it’s own website here.

This festival in Takayama started back somewhere in the 16th century and is now among the 3 most famous ones in all over Japan. There are two parts to this festival, one on the 14th/15th of April and the other one on the 9th/10th of October. The spring festival is held in the Sanno shrine to pray for a good harvest and the autumn festival is to thank for the harvest in the Hachiman shrine.

The festivals are famous for the large ornate floats that parade through the old part of the town (on the first day of the festivals). There are 25 festival floats in Takayama, 12 for Spring, 11 for Autumn, and 2 for others. Some of them feature Karakuri (mechanical) puppets operated by strings and push rods from within.

The parade is the highlight of this festival and the one i went to see. The procession of those floats doesn’t happen if there is rain and this year we were lucky because in the days before there was typhoon Melor bringing plenty of rain and stormy weather to Japan. On my car trip from Osaka to Takayama (a 5 hours car drive) i was driving under what must have been one of the last rain cloud of that bad weather front, but in the late afternoon the sky cleared up and the festival went ahead.

 

The streets were crowded with people but i was told less so than on perfect matsuri days (if the parade falls on a weekend and if the weather is nice and sunny). I also had some troubles with a couple of professional tv-crews recording footage of the festival for the news. The powerful floodlights they use ruined quite a few of my pictures (light-reflections and bad contrast). I think i better keep an eye on those guys next time – better to have them in my back instead of the front.

Overall this matsuri was certainly one of the nicer ones and very enjoyable, but the narrow overcrowded dark streets of the old town make moving around to good photo locations a bit of a challenge.

Transport: The festival places are about 15 minute on foot from Takayama station. Head north east for autumn festival and south east for the spring one. You can’t really miss them, just follow the other people. and the long chains of food stalls. Booking of hotel rooms is usually best done as early as possible due to the popularity of this event.

Website: The town website as well as the shrine website have information available in Japanese as well as in English.

The Futon Taiko Matsuri was among the first festivals i ever visited in Japan (back in 2003). The festival is held close to the g-Forest pool hall and my girlfriend (haha .. that was before we married!) and I were driving past there on the way to play some pool and noticed the people and quickly changed plans to go see the festival instead of playing pool.

The festival features 9 portable futon floats from the local towns around the Mozu Hachimangu shrine. Inside the futon floats are kids chanting and playing taiko (drums) and thats pretty much what there is to say about this festival. It’s a nice small festival that isn’t very well known but worthwhile to see if you happen to be in the area around this time!

 

Website: Mozu Hachimangu Shrine website is here (all in Japanese).

Transport: From the city it’s probably the easiest to just take the Midosuji line (red) subway to Nakamozu and from there either walk (about 1km) to the south east. Parking is limited but usually always possible to find a parking spot somewhere in one of the many backstreets.

This festival is also known as the “Kisyu Yosakoi Odori Benkei” and is held in Tanabe, Wakayama each year in early November. “Yosakoi” is a modern Japanese style of energetic group dance with roots in the traditional Awa Odori.

Yosakoi Festivals are a rather new invention (1954 was the first one in Kochi) but spreading fast! As of 2005 there are now over 200 locations that have yosakoi kind of dancing as part of the festivities and that number is growing quickly. Sendai (a port town couple of hundred kilometers north of Tokyo) hosts the Michinoku Yosakoi Festival and is the third largest festival in Japan in terms of visitors.

 

Benkei was a legendary Japanese warrior monk and often gets depicted in Kabuki and No dramas and even in some video-games. The “Tokei Jinja” shrine in Tanabe City hosts a statue of him and some of the events of this festival also take place there. I am however not quite sure how the Yosakoi part is connected to this monk. The monk was born in 1155, quite a bit older than Yosakoi traditions.

The festival was quite a lot of fun and i am looking forward to return again to it next year.

I was back early from Kyoto and picked Momo up. I dropped her at my in-laws home earlier in the morning where Machiko-san took good care of her (watching her sleep all day?!) while i was away. The sun was still shining so i decided to take her down to the parking field to let her run a bit instead of walking her around the neighborhood. The parking field is the one of the Hana no Bunkaen flower garden and is perfect for Momo because it’s a fully fenced large green area and usually empty after 5pm.

I still had my camera with me due to the visit to Kyoto earlier in the day … and it looks like Momo was eager to please me with some macabre snapshot moments that nobody likes to see probably (but hey, i caught it on camera so i might as well publish it on my blog, right?!)

 

Luckily throwing up twice seems to have done it (whatever it was) and she looks back in shape and healthy again!

It only took like 20 minutes to see the whole Zuiki matsuri parade. So that left me plenty of time to have a little walk around the area and take a couple of pictures of the shrine.

The Kitano Tenmangu shrine got established in the tenth century, and is the patron saint of students, who flock here from all over the country to pray for success in examinations.

On the 25th of each month they have a huge flea market (known as Tenjin-san to the locals) on the shrine grounds. If you happen to be there in Kyoto around this date then it might be a fun thing to check it out!

Kitano Tenmangu is also famous for its plum blossoms which can be seen in their full glory usually in February or early March. The shrine was built in honor of poet and scholar Sugawara no Michizane. Sugawara fell out of favor with the ruling Fujiwara clan and as a result of political maneuvers was exiled to Kyushu. After his death, severe earth-quakes and thunderstorms did constant damage in the home provinces, and it was thought commonly that these were the result of his wrath. The Imperial Court granted him the post-humous title of Karai TenJin, or God of Fire and Thunder.

 

Website: The official website of the shrine is here (also has some info in English) and as always Wikipedia has some excellent info too.

Transport: Bus #50 from Kyoto station: #59 from central Kyoto; #201 from Keihan Demachiyanagi. The shrine is also a short walk from the Kitano Hakubaicho terminus on the Keifuku line. Or come by car, plenty of parking available at the shrine.