Chichibu Yomatsuri Night Festival, one of Japan's three biggest festivals featuring festival floats, will run Dec. 1-6 in the city of Chichibu, Saitama Prefecture. Each float weighs between 12 and 20 tons and is pulled by several hundred people. The festival highlight is on Dec. 3, when six floats will go through the streets between 9 a.m. to midnight and a large firework display will be held 8:30 p.m.-10 p.m.
Chichibu Yatai Bayashi -- a band of Japanese drums and flutes -- will also play. It is believed Myoken Bosatsu, the goddess of Chichibu Shrine, and the dragon god of Mount Buko meet once a year at a site called Otabijo -- literally, "a place of pilgrimage" -- symbolizing Horai, where the fruit of immortality is said to grow, on Dec. 3. The pair are supposed to meet at Kame-no-ko Ishi (Tortoise Stone). The tortoise symbolizes the earth (the goddess) and the dragon god symbolizes the sky.
Another symbolic rite of the festival is to return the water which has brought the harvest to rice paddies back to Mount Buko. Mount Buko is located to the south of the Chichibu basin. It is thought that spring water in the basin comes from the mountain.
Chichibu is accessible from Ikebukuro, Tokyo, via the Seibu Ikebukuro Line, get off at Seibu Chichibu Station.