Festivals & Events– category –

Picture this: it’s before dawn, the temperature is well below freezing, and a bonfire crackles in a snow-covered pine grove. Suddenly, a line of dancers wearing towering, horse-shaped headdresses begins to sway and stomp in perfect...

Picture this: 10,000 dancers moving in perfect rhythm through the streets of a small northern Japanese city, backed by an army of taiko drummers whose thunder you can feel in your chest from two blocks away. This is Sansa Odori, and if y...

Picture a summer night in a quiet mountain-basin city, where twenty-story-tall wooden floats glide down the main street lit up like lanterns, drums pound in unison, and thousands of locals — many of them in matching happi coats represent...

Picture a mountain town where 300 wheeled lantern towers, each one lit by open flame and carried by dozens of chanting men, come crashing together in the streets after dark — while just up the hill, a reconstructed feudal castle watches ...

Imagine hundreds of dancers moving through lantern-lit streets, their faces hidden beneath black hoods or woven bamboo hats, long silk sleeves trailing through the warm August night — this is the Nishimonai Bon Odori, one of Japan’...

Imagine hundreds of dancers moving through lantern-lit streets, their faces hidden beneath black hoods or woven bamboo hats, long silk sleeves trailing through the warm August night — this is the Nishimonai Bon Odori, one of Japan’...

In western Aomori, every August, something remarkable happens: three giant figures — as tall as a seven-story building — slowly emerge from the doors of a museum and begin moving through the streets. These are the Tachineputa floats of G...

Every September, something magical transforms one of Japan’s most livable cities. Sendai’s tree-lined Jozenji-dori Avenue — a broad boulevard shaded by twin rows of towering zelkova trees — becomes the stage for one of Asia&#...

Picture 10,000 dancers flooding the streets of Yamagata City on a warm August evening, each one waving a flower-adorned straw hat overhead and chanting a hypnotic folk song in unison — the air thick with taiko drum beats, the street aliv...

Where the Stars Come Down to Earth Every August, something magical happens to my city. The shopping arcades of Sendai disappear beneath an ocean of color — thousands of enormous bamboo decorations swaying overhead, their paper streamers ...