Summer events in Japan

日本の夏

I am going to introduce very common things of summer in Japan today.

Obon

It is Obon season now. A lot of Japanese are on the Obon vacation and making trips or visiting their parents' houses. Obon is an annual Buddhist tradition for commemorating one's ancestors and we believe that our ancestors' spirits come back to our homes during this term. We also visit ancestors' braves. Obon is generally celebrated around Aug 15th.
Obon has another side. Japanese companies are on vacation at this season. Huge amount of Japanese people rush into sightseeing spots. Most highways are pretty busy. On the other hand, we have less rush hours when we commune.

Summer festival

We have a lot of local festivals everywhere in Japan and we generally call them "Summer festival"(Natsu matsuri). I saw a festival held in my neighborhood last week.
Main event of summer festival is that people carry around Mikoshi in their community. Mikoshi is kind of portable shrine. The spirit of a deity temporarily reposes in it.

Mikoshi is portable shriine.

Bon-odori

Odori means to dance and Bon-odori is for celebrating Obon. There are various explanation about the origin but it is performed in summer festival events cross over Japan.



You see a lot of stroll shops along street to entrance to Shrines generally in summer festival events. And Bon-odori site is held in sacred site of shrines traditionally.

People wear Yukata Kimono if they have...

Fireworks(Hanabi)

Fireworks is associated with summer always in Japan. We have a lot of fireworks events all over Japan in summer. It is not rare that they have more than 15,000 fireworks in one event. In the biggest fireworks festival in Tokyo, nearly one million people visit to see its magnificent display.

We have handy fireworks as well.There are many sorts of consumer fireworks. My favorite is "Senko-hanabi". Senko means incense stick in Japanese. The light of senko-hanabi is pretty delicate and beautiful in the dark.
I am wondering when is last time I enjoyed it....

delicate light of Senko Hanabi

"Beer Garden"

Speaking of summer, I think of chilly chilly beer at the top of building . Specially it turned to be pretty tasty after work.
"Beer Garden" is Japanese English actually. It is a restaurant that is mostly outdoor and open during summertime. We generally visit there afterwork and can enjoy night veiw of the city and sometimes bleeze beside drinking cold beer with some snacks.
You see some of them in real gardens of hotels or restaurants.

If you drink beer on the top of high building, you find it more tasty.