November 2 - Karatsu Kunchi in Japan

Posted on November 2, 2020

Key points

Today’s festival occurs in the city of Karatsu – which is located on Japanese island of Kyūshū. It’s all about celebrating autumn!

Did you know…?

Japan is made up of 6,852 islands!!!

Only about 430 of these islands are inhabited. And when I say “only,” it’s to contrast this number with almost 7,000 islands in total. But a big part of me wants to point out that Japan has about 430 inhabited islands – WOW! That’s a lot of islands!!!

The four main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyūshū. Kyūshū is the third largest, the southernmost, and the closest to the Asian continent of these four.

Now, about that festival…!

The Karatsu Kunchi festival runs for three days (November 2 to November 4), and in non-pandemic years it attracts half a million visitors from all over Japan! There are 14 floats made of paper maché that are carried through the streets, and people open their homes to both friends and strangers for food, drink, and visiting.