Information for the Festival of Dreams event at Kitain Temple, Kawagoe, on May 13th 2023. As you may know, Kawagoe City celebrated 100 years as a municipality last year. This festival has the byline “A day to gather dreams for the next 100 years”.
Festival of Dreams
A festival offering Art, Culture, Entertainment, Food, History, Music and Light up. A brief overview of what’s on offer:
- Live entertainment such as taiko, cheerleading and circus performances
- About ten food booths
- Hands on experiences such as tea ceremony and flower arranging
- Cultural displays such as oyori and a festival float (from Arajuku)
- Main ceremony at 6.40 pm
- The temple will be lit up that evening for the occasion and they will be blowing bubbles for that extra bit of dream factor!
- Giant Daruma:
Every year on January 3rd, Kitain temple in Kawagoe have a Daruma market as part of their New Year celebrations. It is one of the most famous and popular daruma markets in the kanto plain, attracting thousands of people each year. Thus, the temple is synonymous with daruma in Saitama Prefecture. For the Festival of Dreams they will have a 1.8 meter high giant daruma!
Kitain
Kitain Temple is generally busy on weekends, but it gets really busy whenever there is a festival on. It is one of the principal temples in Kawagoe. Moreover, there is quite a bit to see at Kitain Temple, including the 500 statues of Rakan and visiting the only remains of the Edo Castle, Shogun Iemitsu’s birthplace:
Information
Event: Festival of Dreams 2023 in Kawagoe 夢の祭典２０２３ in 川越
Date: Saturday May 13th 2023
Time: from 2.30 pm to around 7.15 pm.
Cost: free to enter the festival area.
Venue: Kawagoe Daishi Kitain (Kitain Temple), 〒350-0036 Saitama, Kawagoe, Kosenbamachi, 1 Chome−２０−1. View on Google Maps.
Access
There is a parking lot at Kitain, that, although quite large, is hard to get a parking spot at on a busy day. Moreover, they’ve actually requested that people do not come by car on the day of the festival. They politely request that you come to the temple on foot or by public transport. The free tourist parking area for Kawagoe (by the farmers market on route 254) is about a 20 minute walk from Kitain, if you walk the back roads – through the precincts of Miyoshino Shrine. The loop tourism bus, which you can get from the station or Ichibangai (Kurazukuri St.), stops near Kitain.
a WHOLE market for Daruma? Sounds interesting!