🏮 Oigami Onsen Orochi Matsuri

老神温泉大蛇まつり

Numata, Gunma (Akagi Shrine) · Every year on 7 May

MikoshiTraditional performing artsFood stalls

235 days to go
Rooms around Numata, Gunma fill up while the festival is on.

The Oigami Onsen Orochi Matsuri is held in Oigami Onsen, Numata City, Gunma Prefecture, centered on the regular grand festival of Akagi Shrine, with various Shinto rituals and events taking place in the hot spring town. Akagi Shrine enshrines the deity who granted the Oigami Onsen, and during the regular grand festival, each inn performs the Goshin Yumori no Gi, praying for gratitude to the hot springs and the safety of visitors. The festival's biggest attraction is the special procession of a giant serpent mikoshi (portable shrine) measuring 108.22 meters long, which appears once every 12 years in the year of the snake. Other events include processions of a children's white snake mikoshi modeled after the auspicious white snake and a young men's mikoshi, a procession of an Edo mikoshi from Hebi Kubo Shrine in Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo, one of the three great white snake sacred sites, a special exhibition of the nationally designated natural monument Iwakuni's White Snake from Iwakuni City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, performances of Kiryu Yagibushi, and food trucks, among many other activities.

Getting there

By public transport: from Numata Station on the Joetsu Line, take the Kanetsu Kotsu bus bound for Oigami Onsen for about 30 minutes, then get off at the last stop. By car: about 20 minutes from Numata IC on the Kanetsu Expressway via National Route 120. Parking available.