Floating Lanterns

Candle-lit lanterns floating across a pond in the moonlight? Yes, please!

This Toro Nagashi lantern ceremony was at the Ueno temple that sits amid the nodding lotus heads of Shinobazu Pond, and it was lovely. What I didn’t know was that it signals the end of annual O-bon festivities, the three days in summer when the spirits of ancestors come back to check on the living (and to make sure the family graves are being kept up to snuff).

There are many Toro Nagashi ceremonies around Japan in mid-August, so if you do a search for “toro nagashi” plus the place you’ll be, you’ll probably find one., This one at the Shinobazu Pond is the earliest one in Tokyo, but the biggest is in Asakusa on August 10th, where the lanterns are launched into the river from the Sumida River Park (on the Asakusa side , not the Skytree side). At the Asakusa Toro Nagashi, you can also buy your own for ¥1500 and launch it along with the others.

Tips for photo-taking at the Shinobazu pond event: Only ceremony participants can get close to the priests launching lanterns from the dock behind the temple, but lanterns are also launched from the left end of the pond (with the temple at your back), the side opposite the zoo. There is no best place to take photos, but they tend to drift across the pond toward the zoo in the prevailing breeze. If you don’t have a camera with a long lens, the best place to glimpse them up close is on the boardwalk spanning the zoo end of the pond, where you can take snaps as they approach. You can freely roam around the pond and take pictures as they go by, though – it’s not so crowded that you can’t get a clear shot near the railing if you’re patient.

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The Last Tea Bowl Thief was chosen as an Editor’s Pick for
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Jonelle Patrick writes novels set in Japan, produces the monthly e-magazine Japanagram, and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had