Yesterday in Kyoto, to mark the end of お盆 obon, there is a festival called 五山送り火 gozan okuribi, where bonfires on 5 mountains are arranged with various characters in order to send off the spirits that came for the obon festival. This event is also commonly referred to as 大文字焼き daimonji yaki, or burning or the character 大, as this is the first one to be lit on a mountain above the 金閣寺 kinkakuji temple.

I learned some valuable lessons in planning, or rather, lack of planning with this one. I went directly after an errand in Osaka, and had ample free time and no plans to fill it. The weather was hot, and the 鴨川 kamogawa river, where many people view the event from, had a refreshing breeze.

My undoing was having around 4 hours of time to kill, limited phone battery, and no plans. Ultimately I ended up mostly wandering around the river and city, which was nice because I feel like I’ve been spending a lot of time sitting around lately. The river was beautiful and I spent some time sitting around and watching the herons.

After a long wait, the event was drawing near. At around 7:20, I returned to the good viewing area at the river and it was packed. There was basically nowhere to stand and police officers were trying to force people to clear paths through the densely packed crowd. I managed to sneak in to a spot, barely. And all of this was 40 minutes before they lit the first fire.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with people for 40 minutes, patiently waiting for the event to start wasn’t my idea of a great time. Eventually the fire was lit, and it was very impressive, and seemed much larger than it appears in photographs, a huge section of the mountain was lit up. Shortly after, people started shuffling off, as to possibly get a vantage point for the next fire, or possibly to leave.

The dense crowd slowly shuffled, with a lot of pushing across the nearby bridge. There was an area of about 10 meters on the bridge where I could actually see half of the second mountain, and make out one of the characters. Police were instructing people to not stop on the bridge, and eventually people got the idea and we finally made it across, after being shoved continually for 15 minutes.

As I entered the subway station, which looked like Tokyo at rush hour, I summarized my thoughts on the event. While it’s surely impressive, I can’t recommend going, or at least standing by the river. Some hotels/tall buildings offer dinners where you can see all 5 mountains in a (probably) more relaxed environment, which may be neat. But the pushing, the crowds, and the standing in one spot for nearly an hour – I don’t believe it was worth it.

Photo Gallery: https://goo.gl/photos/GxcQN2BjfBcNV79AA