Celebrity and Entertainment

However, Tokyo is not the city that can boast its ancient holidays it became the capital only in 19th century and, therefore most of its celebrations appeared later. But what is special about Tokyo is that there are a lot of events here.

According to the Japanese hand-book, the Japanese prefecture celebrates about 900 holidays annually. For instance, if you walk along the city on Saturday or Sunday, you are most likely to encounter some street procession. Yet none of the holidays are alike, even though the Shinto celebration scheme is more or less the same. The idea of this religion is rather simple. However, the simplicity of the doctrine is compensated by the complexity, vividness and gorgeousness of its rituals.

Since childhood, Japanese children are surrounded with holiday atmosphere. For example, 15th of November is the “7-5-3″ day when children of 7, 5 and 3 years old dress special kimono (that is only weared once in a lifetime), go to the temple and get a gift. The older boys take more active part in holidays the help carry the holiday taiko drum.

The other important Shinto holiday attribute is the mikoshi portable shrine with a sacred object inside. Outside, wooden mikoshi is gilded and adorned with various figures (most often it is birds’ heads). Robustly built men dressed in special kimonos carry the shrine along the streets, but nowadays, this role is sometimes played by women.

While mikoshi is displayed to the public, there are dances and songs performed by the holiday participants. Also, hawker’s stands appear all over the place, where you can buy traditional festive food such as okonomiyaki pancakes with eggs and cabbage as well as yakisoba buckwheat noodles.

There are traditional trading holidays here as well. For example, in November, when the hen day comes (in Japan, every day is dedicated to some animal), there are kumade amulets sold in two of the Tokyo temples. According to the popular belief, kumades help keep off the evil forces and is translated as “the bear paw”. They are created of rice straw, piny branches, and the strange object that looks like rake (the “bear paw” itself).

Buddhist holidays are also celebrated here – but Buddhist and Shinto temples are usually visited by the same people: they celebrate at Shinti temples, but bury only in Buddhist. Nevertheless, thanks to the long co-existence of these two religions, nowadays there are joyous and noisy holidays celebrated at the Buddhist temples as well.

Thus, at the Asakusa Tokyo district you can find two temples not far from each other that seem to compete in their importance. After the mikoshi parade, there comes the Buddhist holiday of gilded dragon, which is carried by the four experienced puppeteers. After the performance, the dragon is displayed more closely to the public.