Most festivals ask you to watch. This one, at the foot of Mt. Takao on the second Sunday of March, ends by inviting you to walk across the fire yourself. The Hiwatari Matsuri is the one day a year when Yakuoin, the mountain's 1,300-year-old temple, performs the fire rite of Shugendo mountain asceticism in public: at one o'clock, conch shells sound and yamabushi — mountain priests in medieval dress — file into the plaza by the trailhead, ignite a pyre the size of a small house, and, as sutras roll and smoke towers over the cedars, walk barefoot down a path of smoldering embers.

Then comes the part that stays with people. Once the priests have crossed, ordinary visitors may line up and follow — and hundreds do, tourists and grandmothers and children, shoes in hand. Numbered tickets are distributed; the queue stretches long. By the time the public walks, the coals have cooled to roughly body temperature, so the danger is ceremonial rather than actual, but the sensation of bare feet on the black path of a fire is not something the body forgets. Bring a wet towel for your feet afterward; veterans insist on this.

The venue is the prayer plaza five minutes' walk from Takaosanguchi Station — no climbing required, though the Michelin-starred mountain is right there if the afternoon tempts you. Fifty minutes from Shinjuku: possibly the most accessible fire-walking on earth.