Japan is located at the east coast of the continent of Asia. It has four large islands, they are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyush.Tokyo is the capital of Japan,on the Pacific coast.The total population of Japan is over 120 million.The Japanese have very strong tradition.They share values, beliefs, and customs.They have particular way of doing things and only the Japanese fully understand. Festival called Matsur, in Japanese are usually noisy. Some Festivals celebrate the seasons and sometimes celebrate children.At Festivals they visit Shrines, exchange gifts, peapare special food and some people go back to visit their home village.Japan probably has more festivals than any other nation.Some Japanese culture are developed from Japanese themselves, but some are affected by nearby countries liked China and Korea.
New Years Day is on January 1.It is the biggest celebration of all.People start preparing for a month before.They pay all their debts, clean their homes, and put up decordations.People hang hundreds of red and white decorations in the streets.They also decorate their front gates with pine branches, rope and bamboo hung with strips. Pine stands for long life, bamboo means fleribility and rope is a symbol.People also buy new clothes for themselves and gifts for their friends.On midnight on New Years Eve the ropes of Buddhist temples are pulled 108 times to ring out 108 sins.Almost every one visits Shinto Shrines during the first week of the year.On New Years day , people add a year to their age. They eat a special breakfast and dress up in their best kimonos. Adults open New Years cards and children get lucky money. This day is special reserved for visiting friends and families.
Festival of Lanterns, also called the 0-Bon. It is the one of the bigger festival in Japan. It is on the July 15 in cities and August 15 in country. O-Bon Festival honors ancestors. Peoole believe their dead relatives will come visit them four days every year in July. Families join together in prayer at the family grave yard. On the next night they celebrate the happy return of the spirit by dancing under rows of brightly coloured lanterns outside Buddhist temples and people dance in a clockwise to make a human wheel because Buddhist belief that life is a cycle in which death follows life and rebirth follows death. Dance means welcome and entertain the spirits of their dead family members.
Festival flying is held in Spring. The sky is filled with thousands of kites. People spend alot of time in making big kites. Some of the kites are very large, they need to be skillfully controlled by many people holding strings. The best place to see kites is in a giant kite festival every April in Nagasaki also they have kite flying competitions, they try to knock down the kite of each other in the sky.
Kamakura is held during the winter. Kamakura means Snow Hut and it is celebrated in Yokote. The children build small round huts of snow, where the children play and eat. They cover the floor with thick straw mat called tatami and put candles on a shelf that is craved into a wall. The girls take their shoe off and then put on slippers and wrap themselves with warm quilts. The fireplace is for cooking soup or boiling water for tea. They heat small rice cakes over a little charcoal stove. Parents or neighbors visit them. They offer the guests rice cakes and sips of tea or rice wine. Then the visitors leaves coins or fruits for return.
The Shichi-go-san festival is helld in November 15. 3 , 5 and 7 are considered lucky numbers. Shichi means 7, go means 5 and san means 3. It is a special hoilday for childrens ages that are 3, 5 and 7. That day the children dress in traditional clothes. Boys wear wide trousers called hakama, and girls wear their best kimonos. Families go to shrines and pray for the good healh of the children. The children ring a giant bell, clap their hands to get Kami attention. After there are parties with family and friends, and the children receive lots of presents.
During the warm weather you can see people climbing poles, walking in processions,racing boats, playing tug-of-war, and making alot of noise. Sometimes you are lucky enough to spot a giant creature. Many ceremonies are held at night. Participants carry lanterns, or carry torches and they parade through the darkness. Gion Matsum is the most important summer festival, a peageant of fantastic floats on great wooden wheels winds its way through the city Kyoto.
After I foundout that some Japanese festivals are quite similar to Canadian festivals. For example Japanese New Year and Canadians Christmas are the biggest festival of all. They both involve friends and families, lots of decorations, happiness, presents and cards. Shichi-go-san festival and Canadian Halloween are both for children only. The children all have fun. The Japanese Lantern festival and Canadian Remembrance Day is both the same because they remember and respect their dead ancestors. In all of Japanese festivals, to see those big huge kite flying in the sky.