August 16, 2024 : Kyoto Sending Bonfires of Five Mountains 2024
© 安岡喜晴 (JoyShine)
In Shinto, the soul leaves the body and watches over the descendants, and then returns to our world during the Bon Festival and the New Year.
And every year in Kyoto, at the end of the Bon Festival, there is a ceremony to send the spirits of our ancestors back to the spirit world, and today we went to see the ceremony.
To send the spirits, big letters are written with fire on five mountains, and this year I could see two of those five letters.
Last year we walked along Imadegawa Street from the direction of Ginkakuji Temple.
(August 16, 2023 : Kyoto Sending Bonfires of Five Mountains 2023)
This year we biked along Higashi-horikawa Street from Oike Street to Imadegawa Street,
parked my bike in the bike parking lot at Karasuma Imadegawa, and walked along Imadegawa Street to Kamo Ohashi Bridge.
I was supposed to go down the slope at the Kamo Ohashi Bridge to the Kamo River Delta, but there were too many people to go down, so I just walked straight down the Kamo Ohashi Bridge,
but I could see the two characters of "Dai" and "Hou" clearly, so I think I ended up seeing a better one than last year.
By the way, it seems to be quite difficult to take photos of both from the position of the Kamo River Delta and the Kamo Ohashi Bridge during the ceremony,
they are close in distance but too crowded to move to another position in a short time. So, it seems that planning to shoot different letters in different locations is quite challenging.
Next year, we will target the other three letters from a different position.
(Movie : Kyoto Sending Bonfires of Five Mountains 2024)
(Movie : Kyoto Sending Bonfires of Five Mountains 2024)