Explore I JAPAN IN WINTER
Spring has sprung
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The blooming of the plum blossoms at Yushima Tenjin shrine in Tokyo. LEFT: Toka Ebisu Festival.
One season has ended, and another has begun. Spring is here during late February and March. The Japanese traditionally dress in their finest kimonos and gowns to view the blooms and mark an important moment on the calendar. One season has ended, and another has begun. Spring is here.
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PHOTOGRAPHY FLICKR CREATIVE COMMONS, ALAMY
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the colder months. The Sapporo Snow Festival, a celebration of the skill of sculptors who work only with snow and ice, receives more than two million visitors each year. The Toka Ebisu Festival in Osaka attracts more than a million people who come to pray for success in business at a shrine in the middle of the city. The old capital of Nara also hosts Wakakusa Yamayaki, a January festival in which the grass on the hillside of Mount Wakakusa is set alight, and the Omizutori festival, a series of traditional rituals designed to welcome the beginning of spring. In nearby Kyoto, young archers test their skills at the traditional Omato Taikai festival, while in the Miyagi prefecture just north of Tokyo, men in straw costumes with heavily painted faces throw buckets of water on houses to protect them from fire as part of a festival called Yonekawa Mizukaburi. The season ends, fittingly, with a final tradition: Ume Matsuri, the viewing of the plum blossoms, beautiful white flowers that unfold from plumtree branches across the country
8/12/2017 1:34 PM