Hōnen Matsuri (豊年祭, Hōnen Matsuri) (Japanese for Harvest Festival) is a fertility festival celebrated every year on March 15 in Japan. The most well-known of these festivals takes place in the town of Komaki, just north of Nagoya City. Hōnen means rich harvest in Japanese, while a matsuri is a festival or holiday. The Hōnen festival and ceremony celebrate the blessings of a bountiful harvest and all manner of prosperity and fertility.
The festival’s main features of interest are Shinto priests playing musical instruments, a parade of ceremonially-garbed participants, all-you-can-drink sake, and a 280 kg (620 pound), 2.5 meter (96 inch)-long wooden phallus. The wooden phallus is carried from a shrine called Shinmei Sha (in even-numbered years) on a large hill or from Kumano-sha Shrine (in odd-numbered years), to a shrine called Tagata Jinja.
The festival starts with celebration and preparation at 10 a.m. at Tagata Jinja, where all sorts of foods and souvenirs (mostly phallus-shaped or related) are sold. Sake is also passed out freely from large wooden barrels. At about 2pm everyone gathers at Shinmei Sha for the start of the procession. Shinto priests say prayers and make blessings on the participants and mikoshi which are to be carried along the parade route, as well as the large wooden phallus.
When the procession makes its way down to Tagata Jinja the phallus in its mikoshi is spun furiously before it is set down and more prayers are said. Everyone then gathers in the square outside Tagata Jinja and waits for the mochi nage, at which time the crowd is showered with small rice cakes which are thrown down by the officials from raised platforms. The festival concludes at about 4:30 p.m.
Kappabashi Street is a must go for all kitchen gadget geeks, like me. I like gadgets, but i like kitchen gadgets more. It’s a love-hate affair but more love than hate. When I found out that there is a street in Japan dedicated to kitchenware, I was just ecstatic! Kappabashi, a street in between Ueno and Asakusa, has stores selling everything a restaurant or a specialized cook needs. But they do not sell ingredients thought, it’s just non-perishable wares.
So if you need plastic food for your exterior decor, you know where to go.
Saga (佐賀市, Saga-shi?) is the capital of Saga Prefecture, located on the island of Kyūshū, Japan.
Every fall Saga holds the “Saga International Balloon Fiesta” in the dry riverbed of the Kase River. A quarter of the visitors are from Saga. The number of all visitors was about 15 million in 2005. Balloonists from many countries enter this event.
On October 1, 2005, the city merged with the towns of Morodomi, Yamato and Fuji (all from Saga District) and the village of Mitsuse from Kanzaki District to form the new city of Saga. With this creation, the city became neighbors with the city of Fukuoka in Fukuoka Prefecture. On October 1, 2007 the towns of Higashiyoka, Kawasoe, and Kubota were incorporated into Saga, further expanding its borders. Although it is the capital of Saga Prefecture, it can be said to be within the Fukuoka metropolitan
Some interesting points to note while visiting the city would be the Saga Castle. A rare ancient architecture where the castle was built on plains instead of a hilltop and is surrounded by walls instead.
The Takayama Festival is held twice a year in Japan in the city of Takayama - once in Spring (14-15 April) and Autumn (9-10 Oct). It is ranked as one of the three most beautiful festivals in Japan and should not be missed if you are ever in a nearby city. The history of the festival is rather vague, covered by centuries of tradition. But in the basic sense, since the festival is celebrated twice a year in Spring and Autumn, one can safely base it that it celebrates the start of cycle (spring = growth, new beginning, etc) and the end of the cycle (autumn = death, return, change).
- 
