Mt. Takao is a mountain located about an hour north of Tokyo and stands at almost 2000 feet tall. It is protected as it is located inside of a National park! Last Sunday we went to the Fire Festival located at Mt. Takao. It was about an hour and a half drive from the main base... Not a bad day trip at all! We were at the mountain by 9 AM and started off! We took a cable car halfway up as it was included on our tour. I don't think I have ever been on something that traveled at such a steep angle... We literally had to hold on to the rail to keep from tipping over- not to mention we were so packed into the cable car that even if we did tip over we would probably just lean into other people...
Anyway, once we got off the cable car there was lots of hiking trails to choose from if we wanted to reach the summit of Mt Takao. The first trail we took was literally straight uphill with lots of slippery and muddy stairs... It doesn't help that it has rained in Japan for the past 2 weeks which has created a plethora of mud to hike through! Somehow we made it to the top in one piece... No slips or falls but VERY muddy shoes and pants! We ate a quick lunch at the top but unfortunately it was pretty cloudy so we didn't have a view of Mt Fuji... But it was still pretty nice! Next we hiked down (yeah!!!) for about an hour, past a little waterfall and some small shrines and made it down in time to see the beginning of the parade that starts this really cool Buddhist festival! Let the festivities begin!!!!
The parade was a bunch of monks carrying wooden structure and flags! Some of them have conch shell horns that they all blow and make lots of noise while parading down the street! There were monks of ALL ages... Pretty sure I even saw a centenarian in there somewhere! After they walked by us we sort of jumped in and followed them over to where the fire walking would occur. We followed the monks down the street and towards the main event. There was at least 3000 people surrounding the branches to be burned... At the spot we stood to watch the ceremony we were about 20 people deep and I had to stand on my tip toes to see anything!
It began with a lot of chanting but unfortunately we couldn't understand a word of it! There was a lot of ceremonial things going on and finally after about an hour they lit the fire... Which was a huge pile of green branches! At first it was really smokey but then the flames were really going... After about 30 minutes they started to flatten out the burnt branches and add water to cool it down some. This sacred fire and rituals associated with it are meant to cleanse misfortunes from the past year, and pray for world peace, longevity, good fortune, and good health. The monks went first walking across the cooled fire to the other side.
After the monks go, it is open to anyone who would like to walk across... at this point it has cooled enough that you will not burn your feet. When we saw other people start to walk we tried to find the end of the line so we too could experience this. The end of the line was somewhere far away and there were hundreds and hundreds of people already waiting... our bus was leaving in an hour and we didn't get a chance to walk across the hot ashes.... soooo bummed! Once you walk across, it is believed you will get the benefits of good luck all year... however some believe that the spectators receive the benefits as well! Yeah!!!!! It was a pretty awesome day.... and concluded with some yummy cherry blossom ice cream (even though it was cold out-it was delicious!) 
Japanese Word of the Day:
Kasai (ka-sigh): FIRE!!!
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