{"id":1888,"date":"2014-09-26T01:49:01","date_gmt":"2014-09-25T16:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/want-to-take-part-in-a-traditional-japanese-festival\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T11:35:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T02:35:32","slug":"want-to-take-part-in-a-traditional-japanese-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/want-to-take-part-in-a-traditional-japanese-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Want to take part in a traditional Japanese festival?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mikoshi\"<\/a>No matter where in Japan you go, there always seems to be some festival or another going on. They vary in size from gatherings of hundreds of thousands of people to the smallest of local events, and not one of them is alike;\u00a0except that they are all a marvel to watch.<\/p>\n

But have you ever considered taking part in one? Many festival participants are restricted by organisation, however some, such as the Katayama Hachiman Jinja Grand Festival in Nagoya, \u00a0actively seek out all willing participants.<\/p>\n

Katayama Hachiman Jinja Grand Festival<\/h2>\n

The\u00a0Grand Festival takes\u00a0place annually in Higashi-ku (near Ozone). \u00a0This year\u2019s festival\u00a0and\u00a0parade takes place on October 26 and they are looking for 150 males and 80 females to take part.; but, be warned, participation is no light undertaking.<\/p>\n

The 4km parade passes Ozone Station and Tokugawa Koen, as well as many other local areas, and takes 4 hours to complete. One kilometer an hour, you\u2019re thinking? That doesn’t sound too grueling. However, it is not the distance nor the pace that is the challenge, but the large mikoshi (portable shrine)<\/a> that you are burdened with. No, this is no cake walk.<\/p>\n

But then neither is it the brutal chill of February\u2019s Hadaka Matsuri naked festival <\/a>\u00a0nor the mortal danger of the Suwa Onbashira log riding festiva<\/a>l. In fact, people of all ages take part, however it is recommended that you are in relatively good shape, as lugging the shrine around can be\u00a0pretty tiring work.<\/p>\n

How to Participate<\/h2>\n

So, how do you take part? Well, you can either contact the shrine directly, or if you want to huddle in the safety of other foreigners, you can contact the excellent Kikuko-nagoya.com <\/a>website (kikukok@hotmail.com) and tag along with them. If you do the latter, they will be meeting at the shrine at 11am, where you will be provided with a hanten Japanese jacket <\/a>and festival pants called patchi<\/a>. A shinto ritual will be performed at 12:30, and then off you go.<\/p>\n

If you are worried about being on your feet for all that time, you will be relieved to hear that there is an hour break at OZ mall <\/a>at 14:30 for water, a bite to eat and (if other such festivals are a good judge) a glass of sake or two.<\/p>\n

So, what do you say? Do you want to take part? If so, it is advisable to make contact quickly as the deadline is October 20 2014 ( or until full ). Japanese traditional events are always a spectacle to watch. From the inside, they really are something else.<\/p>\n

By Mark Guthrie<\/p>\n

Image: Wikipedia \"Mikoshi1\"<\/a><\/span> by Jmills74<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0(<\/span>CC BY-SA 3.<\/a>0) \u2013 Modified<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No matter where in Japan you go, there always seems to be some festival or another going on. They vary in size from gatherings of hundreds of thousands of people to the smallest of local events, and not one of them is alike;\u00a0except that they are all a marvel to watch. But have you ever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,42,104],"tags":[83,69,100,148],"class_list":["post-1888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-nagoya-2","category-temples-shrines","tag-aichi-prefecture","tag-event","tag-nagoya-city","tag-nagoya-festivals"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51187,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888\/revisions\/51187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}