Every August 15th Nagatoro holds it’s dual Shinto/Buddhist festival on the banks of the Arakawa River. The popular festival merges two important local customs.

Children, teens, and adults can be seen crowding the Hata Sensuda Sports Park. Tents with the aroma of delicious festival foods wafting from them can also be seen from a distance as people order treats from them, forming long lines that snake towards the parking lot. Everyone here is excitedly awaiting the event of the night – the Hata Fireworks Festival.

One of the unique festivals of the area is the Demon Fireworks Festival, known as the Oni-Hanabi in Japanese. Every summer from early June to the end of July, Noboribetsu holds a special festival to celebrate the demons living in the area.

Japanese summers may bring on the heat and humidity, but they also signal Japan’s love of the festive. Tokyo’s festivals cover the whole spectrum – from congenial goodwill ceremonies to fireworks extravaganzas, summertime in Tokyo is never a dull moment.

Kumagaya is an easy jumping off point from which visitors can head off to a multitude of places, including the nearby town of Nagatoro for a river cruise down the Arakawa River or some hiking in the ever-popular Chichibu mountains. Kumagaya itself hosts Saitama’s largest annual festival, the Uchiwa Matsuri.

Easily accessible from Tokyo via the Joetsu Shinkansen, there are plenty of reasons to pay this part of the country a visit - and not just for the bucketloads of winter activities! Wondering what Niigata has to offer? Here are 15 of the best things to see and do in this part of Japan.

A lot of people flock to Tokyo or any of the other more well known touristy places when they plan a visit to Japan but there’s a city that a lot of tourists have yet to really explore but really should--and that is Kitakyushu City.

In Shizuoka, Fukuroi City Hanabi is known to cater one of the best fireworks festivals in the whole prefecture attended by thousands of people every year.

Yamaguchi prefecture may not be famous, but it still has lots of fun and interesting things to see and do.

It's summer in Japan. And that means fireworks! So slip into your kimono or “jinbei”, grab an uchiwa fan and check out these five fireworks festivals in the Kanto region...

Looking for free things to do in Tokyo this summer? The following are some of the top festivals and other events being held in the city in July, and all of these are free to attend.

How many fireworks go off in one hour? An AMAZING amount, that's how much!