Nagoya Events and Festivals

Iwatsuka Kinekosa Festival: features a dozen naked men placing a bamboo pole in the Shonai River, then one man climbs up until the pole breaks. The direction of the broken bamboo predicts the year to come.

Hina Matsuri: means ‘doll festival’ but this fun holiday is better known as Girls Day, when girls all over Japan show their doll collections for a few days. Legend has it that if a girl shows her dolls for more than three days, she will marry later in life.

Wisteria Festival: is held at the end of April or beginning of May, near Nagoya Castle. Various events include flower exhibitions, stalls selling herbs and gourmand food. Students perform plays and musicals.

Golden Week: is a collection of national holidays beginning in late April and ending in early May. It is one of the longest holiday periods and also one of the most popular. Be prepared for packed out transportation.

Atsuta Matsuri: is held in early June at Atsuta-jingū and features exhibits of martial arts, sumo matches and fireworks. Street hawkers flog their goods by the light of thousands of lanterns.

Arimatsu Shibori Matsuri Festival: is held in early June and features tie-dyeing exhibits and the sale of traditional craft products produced in the neighbourhoods along the road. Floats are also paraded to music and windup doll shows are performed.

Minato Festival: culminates in a water logging contest, performed by 30 raft men. Other activities include a street dance with over 1,500 dancers, a procession of portable shrines, firework celebrations and a marching band.

Ichinomiya Tanabata Star Festival: has streets lined with attractive decorations and is heralded as one of the three major Tanabata festivals in Japan. More than 1.3 million people attend the festival each year.

Nagoya Castle Summer Festival’s: the highlight is undoubtedly the bon dance in which anybody and everybody wearing a kimono twists and turns in single file or in circles accompanied by the beat of drums and the wail of flutes.

Nagoya Matsuri Festival: celebrates the three special heroes: Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa. A giant procession is paraded on the city streets in the name of Oda Nobunaga, who was regarded as initiating the unification of the country.

Chrysanthemum Exhibition: is held between late October and late November and transforms the grounds of Nagoya-jō into a flaming landscape of colour; a separate ningyō (doll) exhibit makes the flowers part of scenes from Japanese history and legend.

Shichi-Go-San Festival: Children three, five and seven years old don their finest kimono and are taken to shrines by their parents to pray for the children’s future health and good fortune.

Akiba Taisai Hiwatari Shinji Festival: sees 100 ascetics running through flames before the general public has a go.