10 Cultural Events in Kyoto That You Shouldn't Miss

The Arashiyama Hanatouro "light up" is a visually stunning festival held in the chill of December. Spotlights and lanterns are set out to illuminate Arashiyama's Togetsukyo Bridge, and the foothills of the surrounding mountains. The enchanted glow is especially dreamy at the local temples and in the bamboo forest, where pathways lined with tall, looming stalks of bamboo are highlighted in an orange haze. The town celebrates by staying open late, and many stores sell local food and goods to visitors.

The Gion Matsuri is Japan's most famous festival, with its origins reaching back all the way to 869. Spanning the whole month of July, it is studded with benchmark events. The most breathtaking of these is the Yamaboko Junko on July 17th, which sees a procession of 80-foot tall wheeled floats paraded throughout the city. The event is repeated on a smaller scale on the 24th. Yoiyama evening celebrations leading up to the parade close off the main streets to automotive traffic and fill them instead with food, drink, and game stalls. Visitors earlier in the month are welcome to watch the massive floats being assembled by hand for the celebration.

Higashiyama Hanatouro is one of Kyoto's most anticipated and celebrated local festivals. Over 2,500 bamboo lanterns light the walking path leading to the foothills of beautiful Higashiyama Mountain by nightfall, illuminating the pathways, temples, and parkland in their wake. Visitors carry flowers and paper lanterns, a stroll leisurely, taking in the enchanting glow, and large, fantastical displays of ikebana flowers are specially constructed to delight viewers. Special events take place throughout, with evenings featuring geisha dancing at the local temples, and school children playing drums and singing songs. The illumination takes place nightly during the festival, between 6:00-9:30pm.

Called Daimonji by locals, the Gozan no Okuribi celebrates the end of the August Obon festival. Five massive bonfires alight around the outskirts of the city, each pyre built upon a separate mountain face. Their burning represents the return of ancestral spirits, thought to visit their families during the Obon, back to the afterlife-- like smoke rising. The bonfires are each distinctive, one in the shape of the character for 'great', another in the shape of a shrine gate, yet another taking the form of a boat. They burn brightly and can be spotted from miles away.

Popularly known as "Sakuyosa," the "Kyoto Sakura Yosakoi" is a festival created mainly by the students of Kyoto. Since it started in 2005 the number of participants has grown, and it is now the largest yosakoi festival in Kansai. At venues that include the famous sightseeing parks, shrines and temples across the city, more than 150 teams each perform their own interpretive style of the yosakoi dance. There are also many ways for viewers to enjoy the festival, such as a yosakoi experience, the "1-hour So-odori" when the dancers and audience members become one, photo contests, stamp rallies, and the sale of original goods.

"Okera-sai" is a ritual that takes place early in the morning on New Year's Day at Yasaka Shrine in Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto. On the night of New Year's Eve, the holy flame lit on December 28th in accordance with an ancient rite is taken from the main shrine building and used to light the "Okera Lanterns" set up within the grounds of the shrine. This flame is transferred to a match cord made of bamboo and, twirling it round and round to keep the flame from going out, it is taken home, and this is known as "okera-mairi." Once taken home the flame is used to light the family altar and to start cooking the zoni (traditional dishes) eaten to celebrate the New Year. The remaining match cord is hung in the kitchen as protection from fire. In the "okerasai" ritual that takes place from 5am on New Year's Day, okera medicinal herbs (Atractylodes rhizome) mixed with kezurikake (decorative reed-shaped twigs) are set alight to ward off evil spirits and thrown onto the paving stones in front of the main shrine building. In this traditional Kyoto event, we pray for peace during the coming year.

The Aoi Matsuri, or Hollyhock Festival, is a celebration of piety and purification from Japan's ancient history, still carried out at Kyoto's Kamo shrines today. The main event is a morning procession of oxcarts, cows, horses, and six-hundred people dressed in traditional Heian-era clothing holding hollyhock leaves, led by an Imperial Messenger. The troupe, which also includes a saio-dai maiden in twelve layers of silk robe whose role it is to praise the shrine deities, make a pilgrimage from Kyoto Imperial Palace to the Shimogamo and Kamigamo shrines, where old rituals are performed. Horse races and archery competitions are also held in honor of the festivities.

The Kitano Tenmangu Shrine holds a fair on the 25th of every month, while the fair on December 25th is called "Shimai Tenjin." In addition to the plant, antique and second-hand clothes stalls that open every month, it is lined with stalls selling such things as straw rope decorations and Aramaki salmon, and crowded with people buying their New Year supplies. Also popular as a New Year lucky charm and made on the premises, "Ofuku-ume" will be awarded from December 13 until the time of the "Shimai Tenjin".

A religious event of the Agon Shu sect held every year at the traditional end of winter. Costumed yamabushi (monks) form a procession and use axes, bows and holy swords to symbolically purify the site boundaries. Then gomaki (wooden prayer sticks) with the worshippers' prayers for the deceased or requests are thrown onto a wooden pyre and burned. The flames reaching high into the sky is a compelling sight. Other things to see are shugen-daiko drumming and the dedication of gagaku (traditional court music). There are special bus tours for worshippers and many people visit from every region.