July 7th is known as tanabata in Japan and it celebrates the meeting of the deities Orihime and Hikoboshi. According to legend, the Milky Way separates these lovers, and they can only meet once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month albeit just for a brief moment.

Not only was it tanabata but it was also our ninth wedding anniversary. We have rarely done anything to celebrate the occasion but decided to do a few things this year culminating in this star festival which is one of Japan’s most colourful traditional celebrations.

I had only heard about this event a few days earlier and I was keen to attend as soon as I saw some images showing hundreds of washi paper lanterns arranged in the shape of the Milky Way along the steps leading up to Zojoji Temple’s main hall. Other than a day of special tanabata themed kids lessons a decade ago, I have never done anything to mark the occasion so it was time to change that.

I thought it was busy enough at last July’s lantern festival at Chidorigafuchi Moat at the fringe of the Imperial Palace grounds, and that was a few months before Japan finally reopened its doors to foreign tourists so you can imagine how busy it was at Zojoji for this festival. Indeed, we had to line up for about 25 minutes to get into the part of the temple where the action was taking place.

We only went to Zojoji Temple earlier this year in order to complete season two of alphabet dating but this did feel slightly different due to the occasion and early evening setting. I would have loved to see the same view below after sunset but sadly we were unable to backtrack to this area, and it would’ve been way too much effort to exit the temple grounds and walk all the way back round to the entry area to get in again.

You’re just gonna have to imagine what this shot would look like at night with the lanterns all lit up

One of the highlights of tanabata is the colourful strips of paper (¥100 each) known as tanzaku which people write their wishes on before tying them to bamboo branches. With Tokyo Tower looming in the background it all adds to the spectacle.

This temple was used as a filming location for a funeral scene in ‘The Wolverine‘ (2013) and before that it featured in the Steven Seagal classic ‘Into The Sun‘ (2005). It is perhaps more famous though for its rows and rows of little statues of jizobosatsu (the protector of the souls of stillborn children) which are decorated with baby clothes, toys and little windmills. Dressed mostly in red baby bonnets, the statues are colourful and sad at the same time.

The sun set at 7:00 pm and that is of course when the beautiful candle light-up was at its best but getting the best shot took a fair amount of time due to the size of the crowds.

Before all of that, we went for dinner at a Taiwanese restaurant a short distance down the road from Zojoji Temple. No fancy meal to celebrate our anniversary but just a couple of simple but tasty Asian dishes.

My wife had scallion oil with sauce noodles and I had Taiwan salt crispy chicken rice. Both were pretty good but nothing really amazing to set them apart from other dishes of similar note.

Lets go even further back in time to the start of the day. That began with a viewing of ‘Indiana Jones & The Dial of Destiny‘ at our local cinema, and was probably the highlight of the day.

As anniversaries go this one was quite good but that’s only because there’s nothing much else to compare it to. Neither of us were too enthralled though by the festival at Zojoji due to the large crowds and the amount of time spent just waiting around. Absolutely none of that was a surprise but sometimes you’ve just gotta hope your expectations are bettered.

Click here to read ‘The Return Of This Traditional Lantern Festival Lights Up The Summer In Tokyo’

Click here to read ‘Alphabet Dating In Japan With My Wife Who Was Still Completely Unaware Of The Task At Hand! (S02E05 U-Z)’

Click here to read ‘Tokyo Daytripper Special: TF Top 10……Quirky Japanese Festivals’

Click here to read ‘Zojoji Temple a.k.a. The Wolverine Temple’