[ March 13, 2010 6:00 pm to March 22, 2010 9:30 pm. ] The annual Higashiyama hana-touro evening lantern walk event will be held March 13-22 from 18:00-21:30 nightly in eastern Kyoto, between Shoren-in Temple and Kiyomizu-dera Temple. The streets and stone-paved alleys of eastern Kyoto will be lined with electric lanterns, and artistic illumination displays are presented at temples along the route. Creatively-lighted floral displays can be [...]

[ January 31, 2010; 6:30 pm; ] January 31 (Sunday)
RAW elements (max, ryotaro & Yung Tsubotaj) and Ms. Meka Nism at UrBANGUILD in Kiyamachi.
OPEN 18:30 Ms. Meka Nism 19:00/ Elements 19:30
adv 1800yen with 1drink / door 2300yen with 1drink
TEL075-212-1125

Coming of Age Day (2nd Monday in January) is a national holiday on Japan, when those who reached the age of legal adulthood (20) over the past year are bored by speeches at a city assembly hall in their hometowns, then party with their friends. Sometimes the party starts before the speeches. Traditionally, the new [...]

[ November 13, 2009 5:00 pm to November 29, 2009 9:00 pm. ]

Every year at this time the Eizan Railway, which runs through my town up into the mountains to the towns of Kibune and Kurama, has a “Momiji Tunnel” event that coincides with the “Momiji Touro”  illumination event in Kibune.

Beginning at dusk, the trains going to and from Kurama slow down and turn off internal lights [...]

Pretty amazing is this, a genius of some sort recreated Kinkakuji Temple in Kyoto in pop-up Lego. That’s all you need to know about this.

Buddhist monk Hoshino Endo on Sunday became the 50th monk since 1585 to complete the Sen-nichi kaihougyo 1,000-day devotional mountain-circling ordeal on Mt. Hiei straddling Kyoto and Shiga Prefectures, earning the title of Dai-Ajari. I live at the bottom of Mt. Hiei and am a registered unofficial member of the support group, since I occasionally came out at 3 a.m. to welcome him down off the mountain in the longer stages, along with the stalwart members who did it every night.

Traditional wooden town houses in Kyoto have been included in a list of endangered cultural heritage sites released Wednesday by the World Monuments Fund, a New York-based private organization.
The town houses, Kyomachiya, are the second Japanese site to be included in the watch list, following the scenic Tomonoura area of Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture. A recent [...]

KYOTO–Although the safety of imperial family members was never really in question, wartime authorities constructed 11 air-raid shelters in the grounds of the Kyoto Imperial Palace after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

KYOTO — A man arrested Monday by Kyoto Prefectural Police on suspicion of stealing an image of a Buddha from a Kyoto temple has admitted to the theft of two other Buddhist icons, investigators said.