Higashi Betsuin Market

photo by Hyppolyte de Saint-Rambert · CC BY 4.0

photo by Hikomi Moneru · CC BY 3.0

On the 8th, the 18th and the 28th some fifty stalls fill the courtyard, from 10:00 to 14:00.

Three times a month the courtyard of a temple in the city centre becomes a market: vegetables grown without chemicals, homemade bread and sweets, home-style dishes, craft objects, some fifty stalls. It opens at 10:00 and is packed up at 14:00. The days are not chosen at random: they all end in eight, because the founder of the school, the monk Shinran, died on the 28th.

The Higashi Betsuin is the Nagoya seat of the Ōtani branch of the True Pure Land School, one of the great movements of Japanese Buddhism, and it occupies large grounds in Naka ku, three minutes from the station that bears its name. The handmade market held there on the 8th, the 18th and the 28th of every month is organised by the temple itself and brings together about fifty stalls: the date comes from the monthly anniversary of Shinran's death, the 28th.

ℹ️ The market is on the 8th, the 18th and the 28th, from 10:00 to 14:00, and there is no charge to get in. It goes ahead in light rain too; when it is in doubt, the temple says so on its own website around midday the day before. There is a free car park, but there is a queue for it and spaces are few: better to take the metro, exit 4 of Higashi Betsuin Station on the Meijō line, three minutes' walk. Outside market days the grounds are open 6:00–16:30 from October to April and 6:00–17:30 from May to September.

🚉 Higashi Betsuin · 5 min walk

Sources: ohigashi.net · higashi-asaichi.jp

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