A Calendar of Japanese Festivals

Japan has a wealth of amazing sights, sounds, smells, and tastes, from ancient temples and beautiful silk kimonos to roaring waterfalls, fragrant cherry blossoms, and delicious native foods. But one of the most interesting parts of Japanese culture is the festivals.

Japanese festivals, known as matsuri, are traditional celebrations deeply rooted in Shinto and Buddhist beliefs, often involving energetic music, dance, and elaborate processions. These events are frequently held to honor kami (the deities, divinities, mythological, spiritual, or natural phenomena that are venerated in the Shinto religion) to pray for a good harvest, protection from natural disasters, or to ward off evil spirits. With an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 festivals held annually across the country, many have been recognized as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage for their historical and cultural significance.

Visitors to these festivals can expect a vibrant atmosphere, filled with traditional games, local entertainment, and food stalls selling treats like takoyaki (deep-fried dumplings made with minced octopus). While many festivals feature the parading of mikoshi (portable shrines) and dashi (large floats), others center around seasonal milestones, like the blooming of cherry blossoms, the summer heat, or the first snowfall of winter.

Here is a guide to some of Japan's most famous festivals, grouped by time of year and location:

Winter (January – February)

Nationwide

• New Year (Shōgatsu): The most important holiday in Japan, where families visit shrines, eat lucky osechi foods, and pray for a prosperous year.

• Coming of Age Day (Seijin Shiki): Held on the second Monday of January to celebrate those who have reached the age of adulthood.

• Setsubun: A February festival marking the division of seasons in which people perform rituals to drive away evil spirits and welcome good luck.

Nara

• Wakakusa Yamayaki: On the fourth Saturday of January, the grass on the hillside of Mount Wakakusayama is set on fire in a dramatic display.

Sapporo (Hokkaido)

• Sapporo Snow Festival: One of Japan’s largest winter events, featuring hundreds of massive, intricate snow and ice sculptures in Odori Park.

Okayama

• Saidai-ji Eyo Hadaka Matsuri: A "naked festival" where thousands of men wearing only loincloths compete for lucky charms thrown by a priest. Every year, over 9,000 men participate in this festival in hopes of gaining luck for the entire year.

Aomori/Akita

• Lake Towada Snow Festival: A February event featuring snow mazes, Japanese igloos, local food, and a nightly fireworks show over the lake.

Okinawa

• Yaedake Cherry Blossom Festival: Held from late January to mid-February, this is one of the earliest opportunities to see cherry blossoms in Japan, owing to Okinawa's tropical climate.

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Spring (March – May)

Nationwide

• Hinamatsuri (Doll Festival): Families display tiered platforms of traditional dolls to pray for the health and happiness of young girls.

• Hanami (Flower Viewing): A major spring tradition where people hold picnics and parties under blooming cherry blossom trees.

• Hanamatsuri: Held on April 8th to celebrate Buddha's birth, featuring rituals where hydrangea tea is poured over Buddha statues.

Kyoto

• Aoi Matsuri: An elegant May festival featuring a large procession of people dressed in Heian-period (AD 794-1185) costumes traveling between shrines.

Tokyo

• Kanda Matsuri: One of Tokyo's "Big Three" festivals, featuring a massive parade of portable shrines to honor the spirit of Taira no Masakado.

• Sanja Matsuri: A wild and high-energy festival in Asakusa where dozens of portable shrines are paraded through the streets to honor the founders of Senso-ji Temple.

Kawasaki

• Kanamara Matsuri: Held in April at Kanayama Shrine, this unique festival centers on a phallus-shaped shrine to pray for fertility and easy childbearing.

Fukuoka

• Dontaku: A massive May festival featuring colorful costumes and performances that attracts millions of visitors to the city.

Various Locations (Cherry Blossom Festivals)

• Matsuyama, Ehime: The Shiroyama Koen festival takes place in early April in the park surrounding the castle.

• Joetsu, Niigata: The Takada Koen festival is famous for its evening illumination of thousands of cherry trees.

• Hirosaki, Aomori: Held from late April to early May, this is one of the most famous locations in Northern Japan for viewing blossoms.

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Summer (June – August)

Nationwide

• Tanabata (Star Festival): Based on a legend of two celestial lovers, the weaver princess Orihime (Vega) and the cowherd Hikoboshi (Altair), people celebrate by hanging wishes on bamboo branches.

• Bon Festival: A Buddhist observance in August to honor the spirits of ancestors, often featuring traditional Bon Odori dances.

• Tōrō Nagashi: A beautiful ceremony where floating paper lanterns are set adrift on water to guide the spirits of the deceased.

Kyoto

• Gion Matsuri: Kyoto’s most famous festival, lasting the entire month of July and featuring a world-renowned parade of massive, ornate floats.

Osaka

• Tenjin Matsuri (pictured above): One of Japan's top three festivals, it features a land procession and a boat parade on the river accompanied by fireworks. 

Aomori

• Nebuta Matsuri: One of the most famous festivals in Japan, featuring massive, glowing paper lantern floats shaped like warriors and mythical figures.

Tokushima

• Awa Odori: The largest dance festival in Japan, where thousands of dancers take to the streets in traditional costumes and straw hats.

Akita

• Kanto Matsuri: Performers balance long bamboo poles decorated with dozens of lit paper lanterns on their foreheads, shoulders, and hips.

Fukuoka

• Hakata Gion Yamakasa: An intense race where teams of men sprint through the streets carrying heavy, elaborately decorated floats.

Kōchi

• Yosakoi Matsuri: A high-energy modern dance festival where teams perform synchronized routines using wooden clappers called naruko.

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Autumn (September – November)

Nationwide

• Momijigari: The traditional autumn pursuit of visiting scenic areas to view the changing colors of the maple leaves.

• Shichi-Go-San: A festival for children aged three, five, and seven, who visit shrines in traditional clothing to pray for health.

Nagasaki

• Nagasaki Kunchi: A dynamic festival reflecting the city's multicultural history, featuring famous dragon dances and ship-shaped floats.

Kishiwada (Osaka)

• Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri: A thrilling (and somewhat dangerous) festival in which large wooden floats are pulled through the streets at high speeds.

Himeji

• Nada no Kenka Matsuri: Known as a "fighting festival," participants slam portable shrines against each other in a display of strength and spirit.

Kyoto

• Jidai Matsuri: Held on October 22nd, this festival features a massive "Festival of Ages" parade showcasing costumes from every era of Kyoto's history.

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Year-End (December)

Nationwide

• Year-end Fairs (Toshi no Ichi): Markets held at shrines and temples where people buy traditional decorations like kadomatsu, which incorporates pine and bamboo, for the New Year.

• Ōmisoka (New Year's Eve): People visit temples to hear bells ring 108 times to dispel earthly desires and eat "long" soba noodles for longevity.

So if you are planning to travel to or in Japan, you can probably catch a matsuri. As you can see, there are festivals all throughout the year and in many locations. Make sure to include one in your travel plans for an experience you won't forget!

Image credit: Midori, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

The Books List, Part 14

20 Books I Would Recommend Reading, 5 Books I Wouldn't, and 50 from my Reading List

The weather is starting to warm up and Memorial Day is right around the corner! Time for another Books List post, because we are gonna head to the beach and read our little hearts out!

My likes/loves: These are books that entertained me, moved me, taught me things, made me think, inspired me, and that I would heartily recommend. They are not ranked – they are merely in the order in which I read them.

1. Survivor – Chuck Palahniuk

2. Tokyo Travel Sketchbook – Amaia Arrazola

3. Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov

4. Atonement – Ian McEwan

5. The King in the Tree – Steven Millhauser – read my review: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2023/08/review-of-king-in-tree-by-steven.html

6. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison

7. What's Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety – Cole Kazdin

8. Marvel 1602 – Neil Gaiman/Andy Kubert

9. Bombshells vol. 1: Enlisted – Marguerite Bennett

10. Just After Sunset – Stephen King

11. JLA Earth 2 – Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely

12. The Shifting Tide – Anne Perry

13. The Face of a Stranger – Anne Perry

14. A Dangerous Mourning – Anne Perry

15. Defend and Betray – Anne Perry

16. My Headless Son Fred and His Head Baby Brother Headley: The Curious Tale of Filmon Trout – T. Hudson Roberts

17. Dietland – Sarai Walker

18. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

19. The Mermaid Chair – Sue Monk Kidd

20. All that Remains – Patricia Cornwell

My meh/yuck list: Did not find these appealing for any number of reasons – some were boring; some had an interesting subject but did not do it justice; some were flat-out terrible. All simply left me cold in some way. Although I am likely to read multiple books by authors I like (you will see a lot of Dean Koontz, Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood, Charles deLint and Toni Morrison), I do not excuse those authors when they write a book I didn't like, so they might just show up here, as well.

1. The Pocket Powter – Susan Powter

2. Hillbilly Elegy – J.D. Vance

3. Lolita -Vladimir Nabokov

4. The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand

5. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

My Reading List: these are books I haven't read yet, so I don't have a reaction for you. However, I could semi-recommend them, based on the reasons they made it onto my list:

1. They were on one of those “100 Greatest Books” lists;

2. They are other books written by authors I really enjoy; or

3. I read a review, and it sounded like something I'd like.

#1 can be a bit hit-or-miss; #2 is almost (but not always) foolproof for me (but maybe not for you), and #3 usually works out pretty well, as it's a combination of the first two. As always, your results may vary, but consider them suggestions. These may tend to come in chunks of stuff by author (apologies).

1. How We Think – John Dewey

2. Humboldt's Gift – Saul Bellow

3. Humphrey Clinker – Tobias Smollett

4. Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin

5. I Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith

6. I Hate Other People's Kids – Adrianne Frost

7. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou

8. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov

9. Idyls of the King – Alfred Tennyson

10. If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi

11. If On a Winter's Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino

12. If This Is a Man – Primo Levi

13. Ignorance – Milan Kundera

14. I'm Not Stiller – Max Frisch

15. Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel

16. In a Free State – V.S. Naipaul

17. In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu

18. In a House of Dreams and Glass – Robert Klitzman

19. In Parenthesis – David Jones

20. In Sicily – Elio Vittorini

21. In the Forest – Edna O'Brien

22. In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee

23. In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan

24. Independent People – Hallidor Laxness

25. Indigo – Marina Warner

26. Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess

27. Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi

28. Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino

29. Ironweed – William Kennedy

30. Islands – Dan Sleigh

31. Jack Maggs – Peter Carey

32. Jacob's Room – Virginia Woolf

33. Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot

34. Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson

35. Jazz – Toni Morrison

36. Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet

37. Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding

38. Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne

39. Journey to the End of the Night – Louis Céline

40. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

41. Julie, or The New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

42. July's people – Nadine Gordimer

43. Junkie – William Burroughs

44. Justine – Lawrence Durrell

45. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami

46. Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell

47. Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson

48. King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev

49. King Solomon's Mines – H. Rider Haggard

50. Kingdom of this World – Alejo Carpentier

That's all for now; hope you find these lists useful as you think about things you might like to read. If you want more, more, more, you can find the previous lists at these links:

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-books-list-part-one.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-books-list-part-two.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-books-list-part-three.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-books-list-part-four.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-books-list-part-five.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-books-list-part-six.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-books-list-part-seven.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-books-list-part-eight.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-books-list-part-nine.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-books-list-part-10.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-books-list-part-11-20-books-i-would.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-books-list-part-12.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-books-list-part-13-20-books-i-would.html

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-dslr-camera-on-white-sand-near-brown-woven-bag-8093191/

Improve Your Vocabulary-Today’s Lesson: Greek Roots, Part 3

 

You will recall that we left the festivities at the letter D, so let’s leave E in the dust (there’s no F in Greek) and move right along to G and H, shall we? Lots of things to do!

Today, we will cover the root gam, which refers to marriage. You will recognize this root in the words bigamy (married to two people, which is generally illegal), and polygamy, which denotes marriages to more than two people, also generally illegal. People who practice bigamy and polygamy are known as bigamists and, uh, Mormons. Just kidding!! There’s also the lesser-known word, misogamist, meaning one who is against marriage.

Secondly, we have gen, Greek for birth, race, or kind. Congenital denotes a characteristic one has at birth, such as webbed toes or attached earlobes. Often you will hear of things such as congenital heart defects. “Con” means “with”, so congenital literally means “with birth”. It's closely related to genetic, which refers to a trait or condition that runs in your family (therefore also related somewhat to birth, but more in a long-term way, so closer to the “race/kind” meaning). Other words with the root gen are genealogy, the study of your family ancestry (your race or kind), and progenitor (pro meaning “first” or “prior”), which is a fancy way to say “ancestor”, which is already kind of a fancy way to say “forefather” (also not as sexist).

Lastly, let’s dip our toes into the H's and come up with hydr, meaning simply “water”. Hydraulic things are mechanically operated by water or other liquids, hydroponics is the science of growing things in water, rather than soil, and we should all make sure to keep well hydrated, especially if you live or work in dry air or lose moisture from sweating.

I hope you had fun with this installment of Greek roots. There are many more to come, so stay tuned! Opa!

Did you learn the basic steps to building your vocabulary?  here’s step one, here’s step two, and here’s step three.

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ancient-statue-at-acropolis-in-athens-31376221/

How to Make Sure that Bad Habit You Dumped Stays Dumped

 

So, you've managed to dump a bad habit, like smoking or eating unhealthy food. Congrats to you! Also, good luck staying on the straight and narrow, because addictions are super hard not to fall back into.

Why so? The problem is not just that they are habits, but that sugar and nicotine are drugs that stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain, setting up a reward feedback for the consumption. So that's the stumbling block if you try to go cold turkey, and that's what the slippery slope is greased with, if you make that first doughnut shop visit: endorphins, the "feel-good" hormones that not only make you feel pleasure, they actually put a damper on pain, which is why you really do feel better after having such things.

But we all know that stuff is really bad for you! So what's the trick to stay quit? Well, it's not to live a monastic lifestyle of denial, because humans just aren't built that way. Instead, find a substitute activity that makes you feel pleasure. Something healthy, of course! A lot of people are pleased to find out that they can get a real high from exercise. I'm personally a fan of exercise-that-doesn't-feel-like-exercise, like dancing, sports, etc. Eating celery and putting in hours on the treadmill doesn't sound nearly as much fun as eating donuts and smoking, does it? But swimming and roller skating? I'll take that any day!

Another trick: don't just “use willpower,” because willpower is a battery, and batteries run down. Set up your life so that you don’t have to wrestle a craving every five minutes. Don’t keep the cigarettes, chips, soda, or whatever-your-thing-is sitting around like a tiny little villain on the kitchen counter. Make the bad habit inconvenient and the good choice stupidly easy. Put fruit where you can see it. Keep your gym shoes by the door. Have gum, tea, crunchy carrots, or some other “hands/mouth busy” option ready before the craving shows up with a megaphone.

Also, watch out for your triggers, because bad habits love a routine. Maybe you always wanted a smoke after coffee, or dessert after dinner, or junk food when you’re stressed, bored, lonely, tired, or celebrating because hey, Tuesday happened. Once you know the pattern, you can mess with it. Take your coffee outside and walk around the block. Brush your teeth right after dinner. Text a friend when you're feeling stressed instead of opening the snack cabinet like it contains the meaning of life (and do you need a snack cabinet?!?). You’re not just quitting a habit; you’re rewriting the little script your brain has been following.

Speaking of friends, another biggie when it comes to staying on track is the power of the "buddy system." It is way too easy to talk yourself into a "just this once" moment when you’re the only one watching. But if you’ve got a friend who knows you’re trying to quit the sweets or the smokes, they can be the external conscience you need. Whether it’s a workout partner or just someone you can chat with when the cravings hit hard, having that layer of accountability makes it much harder to sneak a "cheat" without feeling the sting of disappointment. Plus, doing hard things is just less miserable when you have someone else in the trenches with you to complain—and celebrate—with.

Finally, give yourself some grace if you hit a bump in the road. A lot of people fall into the "all-or-nothing" trap where they think that one single slip-up means they’ve failed completely, so they might as well go all in on the bad habit again. That’s like dropping your phone and then deciding to smash it with a hammer just because it has one tiny scratch! If you have a moment of weakness, don’t let it turn into a week of indulgence. Just acknowledge the slip, realize it was those pesky endorphins trying to hijack your brain again, and get right back on the wagon. One bad day doesn’t erase all your progress unless you let it. Celebrate the wins, learn from the wobbles, and keep going. Progress is not always glamorous, but neither is coughing up a lung or feeling awful after a sugar binge, so, honestly? Progress wins!

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/blue-and-white-mug-on-brown-wooden-table-5196217/

Improve Your Vocabulary-Today’s Lesson: Greek Roots, Part 2

Here's Part One: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2026/04/improve-your-vocabulary-roots-part-one.html

We have already learned a ton of prefixes, as well as the Greek roots anthropo, arch, and chron, so have you been having fun so far? Have you been spotting words out in the world with those word parts, such as anachronism, meaning “without” (an/a) “time” (chron), or in other words, something that is “out of time”, or rather out of place in a certain time, like Walt Disney World showing up in a Victorian novel, or Ben Franklin strolling Walnut Walk in 2026.

Today, we are moving on to delta—I mean, d—in the alphabet (which term we get from Greek in the first place, named after the first two letters, alpha and beta, of the Greek alphabet-a), so let’s learn about democracy, specifically what it means. No, this is not going to be a political science class, simply an etymology session. The Greek root demo means “people”, and cracy means “rule by”, so put it all together and you have “rule by the people”. Abe Lincoln knew his roots when he cited “government by the people” in his Gettysburg Address.

Other demo- words include demographics, “people-statistics” that include innumerable categories, from age, race and religion to socioeconomic status and number of children. For example, advertisers use demographics to determine the age and income of people who read certain magazines or watch certain TV programs in order to know if their products are an appropriate match. Also epidemic, “upon (epi) the people(demo)”, which refers to a widespread illness (and then there’s epizootic, EH-pih-zoh-AH-tik, which refers to an illness affecting many animals). Pandemic, which we all learned about during the COVID outbreak, means even more—an epidemic that is worldwide, instead of just hitting a group. Pan means “all”.

Next up is dox, meaning “belief, teaching, opinion”, and from this we get nifty words like doxology, the little song we sing about our beliefs while the collection is being taken in church (“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow…”), orthodox, the “standard belief”, and paradox, a conflict of beliefs. An example of paradox is the apparent proof by physicists that light exists both in particle and wave forms simultaneously. Weird, huh?

If that excited you, you’ll really get a “charge” out of dyna, meaning “power”, and sometimes used to refer specifically to electric power. The ancient Greeks didn’t have that, of course, so most words with a long pedigree refer to power in general, such as dynasty, which refers to power that is passed down along family lines. Dynamite is certainly powerful stuff, and for the science geeks among us, thermodynamics, or “power from heat”, is a worthy (and usually environmentally-friendly) pursuit.

So, do you now feel dynamic with all this new knowledge? Then go out and conquer some more words!

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/building-facade-with-colonnade-in-athens-16832790/

Did you learn the basic steps to building your vocabulary?  here’s step one, here’s step two, and here’s step three.

Fast and Easy Two-Ingredient Oatmeal Cookie Recipe

Did you try the fast and easy two-ingredient bread recipe? Or are sweets more your thing? In that case, you will love this super quick two-ingredient recipe for making oatmeal cookies! 

All you need is two ripe bananas and and one cup of quick oats. 

Mix them together and spoon them out onto a greased baking sheet, then bake at 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes (start watching at 15). 

If you have some dried fruit like raisins or cranberries or some chopped walnuts or pecans, you can mix those in, too (it won't be two ingredients any more, but I promise not to tell)! 

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/cookies-in-tilt-shift-lens-4182677/

Improve Your Vocabulary: Roots, Part One

It’s All Greek to Me

Now that you’ve read the first three steps to building a better vocabulary (What? You haven’t? Well, here’s step one, here’s step two, and here’s step three. I'll wait!) and you have committed the prefixes I gave you to memory, let’s improve your vocabulary further by learning a few new roots.

These root words are all from the Greek language, which has given us a surprising number of words, considering the Teutonic and Latinate nature of our English language. Greek roots figure very strongly in certain fields, specifically that of medicine, so it would certainly benefit us to become acquainted with them. Even if you don’t want to become a doctor, it wouldn’t hurt to know what they’re talking about, now, would it? You might be watching one of those medical dramas and suddenly realize it’s not all gibberish anymore! Let’s learn some new root words now:

First, we have anthrop or anthropo, meaning man or mankind, or in less sexist terms, human or humankind (although sometimes it specifically means man, as in male human). Some examples of common words using this root are philanthropy, which literally translates as “love of [fellow] man”, and which we understand as “charity” or “charitable endeavor”. Of course, if you love your fellow man, it is easy to be charitable to him. Anthropomorphism, blending the root for “[hu]man” with the Greek root morpho, meaning “change”, is defined as the tendency to give animals human characteristics, such as similar personalities or opinions to those of people. Literally, it would translate as “change to human”. The word misanthrope combines anthro with the common prefix “mis”, meaning “not” or “against”, to describe a person who is averse to his fellow men—a hermit or antisocial type.

Another useful Greek root is arch, not as in a curving parabola such as the St. Louis Arch, but arch pronounced as “ark”, as in archangel, archaeology or archaic. This root means “first” in two separate ways. First temporally, as in “ancient” (which we see in archaeology, “study of the ancient”, and archaic, literally “old” or “ancient”, but more commonly used to mean “outdated”). Also it means first hierarchically, as in “chief” (hence archangel, meaning a chief or primary angel—Michael, Gabriel and Uriel are archangels in the Christian tradition). And didja notice I also sneaked hierarchically in there, too?

Last but not least, we have chron, a Greek root meaning “time”. The term chronic means “over time”, as in a chronic illness; chronology, literally “study of time”, is more accurately defined as “timekeeping” (the chronometer, or “time-measure”, on your wrist or office wall is a facet of this), and the prefix syn, meaning “same”, combines with our root to give us synchronize, which as we know from spy movies (“Synchronize your timepieces, gentlemen!”) means to operate at the same time, or “in synch”. Yep, it’s the same place lip-synching comes from.

Now, memorize these, use them in your speech and writing, and don't worry, there will be more roots to come soon!

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-a-greek-flag-11452708/