This is the Golden Week Holiday in Japan, a time of mass exodus and crowded roads (as well as crowded temples, shrines, hotels, restaurants, trains, buses, malls, supermarkets, convenience stores and cemeteries). Since, as you all know, I’m not traveling this year as I’m spending the bulk of the holiday with a paint roller glued to my hand, I can downplay its fascination factor… but it is always significant for Reiki… here’s why…

Golden Week

Golden Week is one of the three main holiday seasons in Japan. Right around the beginning of May there are several national holidays that fall very near to each other (April 29th: Emperor Shōwa Day, May 3rd: Constitution Day, May 4th: Nature Day & May 5th: Children’s Day) so they lumped them all together and called it Golden Week. Virtually the entire country is on holiday at this time,and since it is one of the few times the whole family has a holiday together, traveling is the most common way to spend it. Needless to say, its a very exciting time, but for me, and for Reiki, it brings what I feel is a much more interesting event… the Uesaku Festival.

Uesaku Festival

Each year on the full moon day in May, Kurama Temple (the birthplace of Reiki) hosts the Uesaku Festival, a spiritually-charged event dedicated to Bishamonten, the Buddhist God of Protection. This festival begins early in the evening (although swarms of priests and spectators start arriving early in the afternoon) until dawn of the following day. The Uesaku Festival is the only Himalayan-style full moon event in Japan and it is quite exciting.

Part of the excitement is Mt. Kurama itself. The energy of the mountain is Reiki energy personified and you can feel it pulling you in if you get anywhere close to it. The Uesaku Festival is the only time you can spend the night on the mountain and lets just say there are other energies at play besides Reiki. For those sensitive to spiritual energy it can be quite intoxicating.

The last time I was at the Uesaku Festival I was with another Reiki Master and we repeatedly gave each other attunements to various energies that were passing by. The energies themselves seem quite happy to help, although the sensation that I got was that they found it a bit peculiar… people around us certainly did… although the energies that abounded were quite familiar with the Reiki energy, the majority of the people were not.

At any rate, if you plan on visiting Japan you could do far worse than to do so during the Uesaku Festival, although you will definitely want to steer clear of Golden Week… a tricky scheduling task but one bound to be one of the most rewarding you’ll ever experience.

For further explanation or discussion, your thoughts are most welcome and highly encouraged, please feel free to comment below!!!