setsubun saitama

Setsubun Saitama- Setsubun is a religious ceremony practiced every year on February 3rd. Historically setsubun, which literally means seasonal division, was a four day period marking the changing of the seasons. Risshun is, with rare exceptions, on February 4th. Risshun is the first day of spring and historically the startRead More →

Kumagaya Uchiwa festival

Kumagaya Uchiwa Festival is one of the Kanto area’s largest summer festivals. It is open to the public from July 20th – 22nd annually, but it is actually celebrated from the 19th to the 23rd by patrons of Yasaka Shrine of Kamakura-cho. However, it was not open to the general publicRead More →

Generic fireworks photo for Kumagaya fireworks event information

The Kumagaya Fireworks are normally on in August annually. However, in 2020 they intentionally scheduled them for June, so as not to clash with the Olympics. Then… the pandemic happened! And the 2020 Kumagaya fireworks, like so many other, were completely cancelled. In 2021, they scheduled the fireworks for anRead More →

a tunnel of yoko sunlight sakura cherry blossoms in Saitama prefecture

Have you heard of Yoko Sakura 陽光桜 or, in English, Sunlight Cherry Blossoms? They were made relatively better known thanks to a movie about their creator in 2015. I say creator, because they are manmade. Cultivated by a school teacher, by crossbreeding the Taiwan and Amagi Yoshino cherries, in memoryRead More →