Characters are drawn on the mountains in fire. Kyoto's Gozan no Okuribi takes place on the night of August 16, sending the ancestral spirits that returned for Obon back to the other world. At eight in the evening, the character for "great" blazes up on the eastern mountain, followed by other characters, a boat shape, and a torii gate, fires lit in sequence across five peaks. On the dark mountainsides, giant figures glow and burn, fading away in about thirty minutes. What burns are prayer-sticks, wood on which people have written the names of the dead and their wishes, set alight on the mountains. The flames are a send-off: thank you for coming; come again next year. The exact origin is unclear, but for at least several centuries the people of Kyoto have known summer's end by this fire. When it dies, autumn enters the city.