28 events start this month
Festivals, fireworks, illuminations and seasonal events starting in January 2027, checked against official sources.
Japan's oldest football competition ends with the traditional New Year's Day final at the National Stadium, a fixture of the Tokyo oshogatsu sports calendar alongside Hakone Ekiden.
New Year market in front of Takasaki Station selling the city's famous red daruma wishing dolls (Takasaki makes 80% of Japan's daruma), with food stalls, stage events and a daruma burning ceremony.
A season-long series of short fireworks displays fired over the snow at Yuzawa's ski resorts on winter nights.
Japan's biggest university relay: 21 teams race Tokyo to Hakone and back over two days, 217.1 km in all.
Kabuki-za's January New Year programme is expected to open on 2 January 2027; the programme was not yet announced at verification.
One of Japan's earliest plum festivals, in a historic garden with 469 plum trees of about 60 varieties.
Maebashi's first market of the year, a daruma doll fair held every 9 January since the 1600s.
The New Year grand sumo tournament: 15 days at the Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo.
The gassho-zukuri farmhouses of Ogimachi are lit on four January nights, entry by advance reservation only.
New Year decorations are burned in a giant sacred bonfire while groups of 'hadaka-mairi' pilgrims in loincloths walk silently through the winter night to the shrine; unique to Miyagi.
Villagers attack a seven-metre wooden shrine with burning torches in one of Japan's three great fire festivals.
One of Japan's earliest cherry blossom festivals, held among about 7,000 Taiwan cherry trees on Mount Yaedake in Motobu.
Sapporo's international art festival takes over the snow-covered city from 16 January to 21 February 2027.
Major winter special exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum devoted to the Tale of Genji and Heian court culture, with national-treasure scrolls and screens.
Jozankei Onsen's winter light event at Jozankei Shrine, relaunched for 2027 with new lighting concepts in place of the snow candles.
The 16th Tokyo Art Book Fair runs at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo over two blocks in January 2027.
Ice sculptors carve through the night in Matsumoto Castle Park, with the finished works lit against the castle keep.
Winter fireworks over Lake Kawaguchi with Mt Fuji behind, launched from Oike Park and two other lakeside sites on weekend nights.
A village built entirely of lake ice and snow on the frozen surface of Lake Shikaribetsu, with an ice bar, an ice chapel, ice lodges and an open-air bath on the ice.
Ice structures built in the cold of Sounkyo Gorge at Sounkyo Onsen, lit in colour at night.
A nightly light and music show played across the snow-covered fields of Tokachigaoka Park at Tokachigawa Onsen, named for the swans that winter on the river.
The dry grass of Mt Wakakusa above Nara Park is burned in a single line of fire, preceded by fireworks.
The whole 33 ha grass hillside above Nara Park is set alight after 600 fireworks, a tradition said to settle a boundary dispute between Todaiji and Kofukuji. Nara's signature winter night.
Italian-designed light sculptures fill central Kobe for ten nights in memory of the 1995 earthquake.
A lakeside winter festival at Yasumiya on Lake Towada with winter fireworks on every open night, a snow park and food stalls from both sides of the prefectural border.
Hundreds of candle-lit miniature kamakura along the Sawaguchi riverbed in the hot spring town of Yunishigawa, a designated Japan Night View Heritage site.
Ice sculptures made from Lake Shikotsu water at Lake Shikotsu Onsen, blue by day and lit at night.
Cherry blossom festival held on the last Saturday and Sunday of January around Nago Castle Park, with over 20,000 cherry trees in the area.