Kawagoe Festival

The Kawagoe Matsuri is held over two days every year on the third Saturday and Sunday of October. What makes the Kawagoe Festival popular throughout Kanto is the fact that the festival floats move down the main street of the warehouse district with crowds gathered on either side of the street, creating a time-slip back to the Edo period. Indeed, the festival is registered as a National Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property and was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2016. The main event is the hikkawase (曳っかわせ), a musical face-off between the floats to see which is best at the traditional hayashi performance. The hikkawase takes place from 7:00 PM on the Saturday and 6:30 PM on the Sunday.

Note that during the evening hikkawase, the streetlights throughout the historic Kurazukuri district are often extinguished to highlight the hundreds of lanterns decorating the floats. While JR Kawagoe Station is the main transport hub, Hon-Kawagoe Station on the Seibu Shinjuku Line places you significantly closer to the warehouse district; this is a vital distinction on Sunday night when the central intersections become so densely packed that moving between the two stations can take triple the usual time. If you plan to watch the climactic face-offs at the Fuda-no-Tsuji intersection, be aware that pedestrian flow is strictly controlled by marshals and some side streets are converted to one-way traffic only.