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Secret chambers, booby-trapped floors, and three successive rings of fortification, all designed to protect the shogun. Elegant gardens and tea houses. Brilliant natural beauty that shifts with the changing of the seasons. That is Nijo Castle.
What will you discover when you explore Nijo Castle, one of the most well-preserved of Japan’s Edo Period? Use this handy travel guide in planning your next trip to Kyoto.
Tsukimi, also called Otsukimi or Jugoya, literally means “moon viewing” or “looking at the moon”. Like the hanami of spring and koyo of autumn, this Japanese festival honors a wonder of nature – the autumn moon.
What are the origins of this festival, and how is it celebrated today? This travel guide will provide all the details you should know if traveling to Japan during the Harvest Moon Festival.
There are countless local festivals (祭り, matsuri) in Japan each year. They are all spectacular, extravagant, and fun but also unique. Each celebration is based around an individual shrine which pays tribute to a different deity or a famous historical event.
The celebrations vary greatly as each has features based upon the specific shrine but hey also have many similarities. Almost all of them involve energetic processions where thousands of people dance, chant, and dress up in special clothes.
Kyoto is one of the most well-known cities in Japan. It is the capital city of the Kyoto Prefecture of Japan’s Kansai region. For more than one thousand years, Kyoto was the Imperial capital of Japan.
At the city’s heart lies Gion, a center of the traditional arts and famed entertainment district. If you’re searching for a taste of traditional Japan, Gion’s flagstone streets lined with wooden buildings is a good place to start.
In Japan, typhoons are regular and natural occurrences. These events involve little risk beyond rain and wind causing you to alter your outdoor tourism plans. However, it is useful to know what you should do if you are vacationing in Japan during a typhoon alert.
Halloween continues to grow in popularity in Japan. It burst onto the scene in 2000 when Tokyo Disneyland hosted its first Halloween event. It was a triumph and other theme parks followed suit. Now Halloween is one of the biggest events on the calendar, held, of course, October 31.
However, Halloween in Japan isn’t just an imitation of the American version. First of all, there’s no ‘trick or treating’. Secondly, as it’s a new phenomenon, people don’t care about most of the Halloween traditions which are important elsewhere.
