Japan
Chichibu
Lantern-lit festival floats hauled through the December dark, ninety minutes from Tokyo.
The floats burn in the dark. Every December, Chichibu's night festival sends towering lantern-lit floats through the streets to drums and fireworks, in one of the three great float festivals of Japan alongside Kyoto's Gion and Takayama's. Chichibu sits in a mountain basin ninety minutes from Tokyo, close enough for a day trip yet deep enough into the hills to feel like a different country.
The Chichibu Night Festival, held every December at Chichibu Shrine, is the town's great event, but the valley has substance all year. Thirty-four Kannon temples form a pilgrimage circuit that threads the town, its river valleys and wooded slopes, and is walked in stages over the best part of a week. Downstream at Nagatoro, traditional boats run the Arakawa River between rock walls. Chichibu calls itself a brewing town — four sake breweries founded in the Edo period, two wineries, a beer brewery and the whisky distillery whose Ichiro's Malt has taken world awards.
Solo
The thirty-four-temple pilgrimage is a contemplative solo walk through mountain valleys — physical, achievable in short sections, and quiet between temples.
Friends
The night festival is a group event by nature — the crowds, the floats, the fireworks demand company. A Nagatoro boat adds a daytime thrill.
- The December night festival hauls lantern-lit floats through the streets in one of the three most celebrated float festivals in Japan.
- Thirty-four Kannon temples form a pilgrimage circuit through the town, its valleys and wooded slopes.
- Traditional boats run the Arakawa River between the rock walls at Nagatoro.
- Four Edo-period sake breweries and the distillery behind Ichiro's Malt whisky make Chichibu a brewing town.
Waraji-katsu — a pork cutlet the size of a straw sandal draped over rice, Chichibu's outrageous signature.
Ichiro's Malt, the Chichibu whisky that took world awards, poured at a bar in the town that makes it.
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Morning-market mist over a merchant town where cedar balls hang above every sake brewery.
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Thousand-year pilgrim trails through dripping cedar where stone guardians watch each step.