The Nagoya Festival
Sep 05, 2019 By Ray Proper
The Nagoya Festival is held annually on the third Saturday and Sunday of October. The main attraction is a parade, lead by Nagoya’s 3 most famous historical figures and feudal lords; Nobunaga Oda, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, and Ieyasu Tokugawa, of 700 mounted soldiers, foot soldiers, entertainers, and dancers. Besides the parade,...[ Click to read more ]
Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri in Osaka
Aug 29, 2019 By Bert Wishart
With more than 300 years of history, the Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri is the oldest Danjiri Festival in Japan. Such festivals are held right throughout the country, but for most Japanese, if you say 'Danjiri Matsuri' this is the one, with its raucousness and inherent danger, that springs to mind. The...[ Click to read more ]
Eating Your Way Through Tokyo in September 2019
Aug 27, 2019 By Jason Gatewood
September is a hard month, it isn't summer, and it isn't fall. It is still hot, but cooling down. It is a good time to be outside, sort of, but everyone is tired from beer gardens over the summer and preparing for the upcoming fall colors, so not much is...[ Click to read more ]
Yokogawa: Where Old and New Meet in Hiroshima
Aug 26, 2019 By Hugh Cann
Historically, Yokogawa is the old Shitamachi and before the second world war was Hiroshima's commercial business district. The post-war reconstruction shifted most commercial and retail activity to Naka -ku (ward) area of central Hiroshima. Today, some of the businesses in Yokogawa remain much as they were after the immediate reconstruction....[ Click to read more ]
Sample Japan’s Finest Beef Vendors at the 2019 Autumn Wagyu Show
Aug 23, 2019 By Jason Gatewood
Japan’s highest quality beef, wagyu, has a world-renown reputation for being some of the savoriest, delicious cuts of meat in the world. The reason for the robust flavor comes from the “marbling” of the meat, a term used to describe how the fat and fibrous parts of the meat intermingle...[ Click to read more ]
Meguro Sanma Festival: Thanks for all the (free) fish!
Aug 20, 2019 By Jason Gatewood
It’s no secret that Japan is a seafood lover’s paradise. Everything that swims, crawls or otherwise calls any body of water home can be found on a dinner table here. Of course, the national dish, sushi, is served raw but grilling fish over coals is also part of traditional Japanese...[ Click to read more ]
Stepping Back in Time at the Arimatsu Float Festival
By Bert Wishart
Sometimes when you visit festivals, with everyone dressed in their finest kimono or yukata, the street stalls lining the streets, and the local historical curiosities paraded around the town, if you squint just enough, you feel like you are able to capture a small glimpse of how the old Japan...[ Click to read more ]
Going Potty over the Setomono Matsuri
By Bert Wishart
Although Japan has one of the oldest ceramic traditions in the world, with earthenwares being created as early as the Jōmon period (10,000–300 BCE), as a heavily wooded country most domestic utensils in Japan were usually made of either natural or lacquered wood. This all changed when Katō Shirōzaemon, the...[ Click to read more ]
Light up the Beach at the Enoshima Toro Lantern Festival
Jul 26, 2019 By Jason Gatewood
The area to the southwest of Tokyo proper located in Kanagawa Prefecture called Shonan, is known for being a longtime beach playground for anyone into the summer beach scene in Japan, and a local getaway spot for those of us living in Greater Tokyo whenever the stifling heat of summer...[ Click to read more ]
Asakusa Samba Carnival in Tokyo
By Ray Proper
If you are looking for a lively and colorful way to draw your summer to a close there is no better option than the annual Asakusa Samba Carnival. This carnival is the largest Samba dance-related event in Japan, and it draws crowds of over 500,000 to view the spectacle of...[ Click to read more ]
