Yuwaku Onsen, where an anime's invented lantern festival became a real one

Yuwaku Onsen is a single street of small inns in the hills south-east of Kanazawa. In 2011 an anime invented a festival for it, and that autumn the town held the festival for real.

A festival written before it existed

Hanasaku Iroha, a 26-episode series by P.A. Works, follows a Tokyo teenager sent to work at her grandmother's hot-spring inn in a town called Yunosagi. Its last episodes turn on the Bonbori Festival (ぼんぼり祭り, Bonbori Matsuri), where paper lanterns guide a small shrine deity toward Izumo and carry the town's wishes with her.

Yunosagi was drawn from Yuwaku. In October 2011, weeks after the finale, the town hung lanterns along the lane to Yuwaku Inari Shrine and walked the procession as drawn, and it has stayed on the calendar since.

ぼんぼりの灯りが、神様の道しるべになる。

What matches the frame

The shrine steps, the lane and Gyokusenko, a small lake a short walk past the last inn, sit where the series puts them. Wishes are written on slips called nozomi-fuda (のぞみ札) and burned at the lakeside on festival night. The inn itself cannot be found: its exterior drew on the Hakuunro Hotel, demolished before the series aired.

Going on an ordinary day

Hokutetsu bus 12 runs from Kanazawa Station's east exit to the end of the line in about 50 minutes. The festival fills the street for one October evening, but the lanterns are lit from summer, and in late January the town packs snow into its himuro (氷室), an ice house by the lake. The public bath, Shirasagi-no-yu, and the Yumeji-kan museum fill an afternoon.

The inns are working businesses with guests in residence. Photograph from the lane and keep the entrances clear.