Koto, Tokyo

Once every three years, a particular summer returns to the old quarters of Tokyo.

Monzen-nakacho, in Koto City. The annual festival of Tomioka Hachimangu Shrine — one of Edo's three great festivals, alongside the Sanno and Kanda festivals. Its scale turns on a three-year cycle, and 2026 falls on the honmatsuri, the fullest year of all.

On the final day, more than fifty great mikoshi are carried through the low city at once, some eight kilometers across the parish wards. Wasshoi, wasshoi. And then the thing this festival is known for: the water. From the roadsides, people fling buckets and train hoses on the bearers, dousing them with water of purification. Carriers and onlookers alike end up soaked, and laughing.

It began, they say, as water and salt thrown to wish the bearers safe passage. Somewhere along the way the prayer became a summer game that pulls in the whole street.

The polish of old Edo, and the heat of high summer. Three years of waiting spill into these five days. In the very center of the capital, a summer you can still get drenched in — and laugh.

The grinding wheel turns, and you press the glass against it. The glass resists, then yields — a shallow cut forming, catching the light differently than the uncut surface. This is Edo kiriko, the cut glass tradition of Tokyo's shitamachi districts, developed in the Meiji era from techniques brought from the West and transformed into something distinctly Japanese.

The patterns have names — hemp leaf, chrysanthemum, arrow fence — and histories. Each represents a particular relationship between the glass and the light passing through it, a different way of multiplying reflection into something that resembles, from the right angle, architecture. The workshops in Sumida and Koto wards offer the experience of making one of these patterns yourself, under the guidance of someone who has spent years learning to control the wheel.

The shitamachi districts where Edo kiriko is still made sit in the shadow of the Tokyo Skytree, which is visible from most of the workshops. The juxtaposition is not ironic; it is simply how Tokyo holds its layers. The same neighborhoods that produce this craft have been producing things with their hands for centuries. The specific thing changes; the intention to make something carefully does not.

Whether it is good or not is beside the point. The only question is whether you made it. At Tokyo Big Sight, twice a year, Design Festa is held, one of Asia's largest art events. More than ten thousand exhibitors take part, with paintings, sculpture, jewelry, clothing, glass, photography, any genre at all, professional or amateur, it makes no difference. There is no jury; anyone can exhibit, and that is the event's philosophy: if you want to express something, the place is here. So it is a mix of everything, the astonishingly skilled beside the rough and raw, but all of them making things with their own hands. Visitors can talk directly to the creators: how did you make this? And the maker answers with shining eyes. What you buy is not the work, but someone's desire to create. One of Tokyo's two great art events.