There is no Iruma Dezome Shiki in 2021 on account of the Coronavirus. A dezome shiki is a New Year event of the fire brigades in Japan. It involves a blessing / ceremony and different type of entertainment, usually some type of demonstration of the fire brigade’s skills and capabilities.Read More →
The Iruma Air base air show happens annually on the 3rd of November. However, in 2020 the event has been cancelled due to the Coronavirus outbreak. November 3rd is a public holiday in Japan for Culture Day. This is a popular event that attracts thousands of spectators. For many yearsRead More →
Iruma Mando Festival – Mando or Mandou 万燈 means 10,000 lights and is a type of Japanese lantern. For this, the biggest annual festival held in Iruma, the festival field is decorated with Mandou (pictured). The popularity of the festival is growing year on year and is expected to attract inRead More →
Iruma Nouryou Firework festival – nouryou is one of those Japanese words that is difficult to translate. It literally means coolness, but when it is used with “sai ” it means festival. Generally, it is liberally translated as “Summer Evening Festival”. The Iruma Summer Evening Festival is held annually onRead More →
Otourou Festival Iruma – Otourou is one of those words that is hard to translate into English. The word is actually “tourou” and the “o” in front is honorific. The Otourou festival is spelt in hiragana, not kanji. Without kanji it is hard to say for sure, but generally tourouRead More →
Model Railway Town play area ALIT This year for the spring holidays, ALIT the Archives, Literature, Information and Tea Museum, will have a large model railway town play area. Their (ALIT) facebook page points out that the event opens on the same day as the Moomin Valley Park grand opening,Read More →
ALIT stands for Art / Archives, Library, Information and Tea. It is essentially a tea museum. And one of only a handful of tea museums in Japan, or even the world. The tea exhibits and related maybe the main part of the museum, but there is a lot more toRead More →
Chukaman Museum ~ free nikuman factory tour in Iruma The “Only in Saitama” series continues with Saitama’s latest free factory tour. The Chukaman Museum is a Nikuman (pork buns) Factory tour in Iruma. It is the first, and currently only, museum of its type in the whole of Japan. TheRead More →
Santa Seibu – Santa Claus will be in Seibu Pepe in Iruma on Sunday December 9th at 5 different times. Santa will be walking around the shopping center. If you find him you can approach him to get your photo taken with him. He will also be giving a smallRead More →