Bishamon Daruma Festival

 

The Bishamon Daruma Festival is an annual festival at Myoho-ji Temple in Shizuoka Prefecture.  It is one of Japan's three great Daruma Festivals and is held over three days according to the lunar calendar between late January and mid-February.  The other two big Daruma Festivals are Shorinzan Daruma-ji (Takasaki, Gunma) and Jindai-ji (Chofu, Tokyo) temples.

I met up with two friends and we attended the festival Saturday morning. The temple is about a 15 minute walk from the train station, along a narrow street full of vendors. I thought it was pretty crowded, but my friends had attended before the pandemic and said it was much more so back then.

Even though I know it is not a healthy snack (is any type of festival food healthy?),  I really like these fried noodles covered with seasoned salt.

If you don't know about Daruma dolls, check out this link, to learn all about them. In short, they are traditional Japanese good luck charms that symbolize resolution and perseverance in achieving goals. When you buy the doll, it has two blank eyes.  You color the left eye as you make a wish or goal, then the right one when you achieve the wish or goal. The next year, after the second eye is colored in, you can return it to the temple.

This festival is held at Myoho-ji, which is said to be a one-of-a-kind temple. The pavilion designed to shelter the incense burner has a Chinese influence, with dragons on its roof. You have to walk up tall steps to get from the street of vendors to the temple.

This line of people are waiting to return last year's daruma dolls.

This monk seemed to be in a hurry.

I bought a small red daruma doll and will do a post another day about it.

I think red is the color for general goals, but there are all different colors for different wishes, such as health, wealth, and relationships.

Next year's festival will be February 4, 5, and 6, 2025. 

After leaving the festival, we headed for the Gakunan train station for our next destination.

When we got off the train, we walked to Izumi no Sato, a pretty park with a spring.  

Even though the day was kind of gloomy, the flowering trees perked things up a bit.

There were a lot of fish - big black ones and smaller silver ones.

We had lunch at this cafe.

I had cheese and tuna toast, which seemed more like an American lunch than a Japanese one.  It was good and a little nostalgic.

After lunch, we walked back to the train station, then changed to the JR train and everyone headed home.  It was a fun day and it felt good to be attending a festival again.