Japanese Festival Games for Fun Summer Prizes
Linh Le
Summer in Japan has become more than a hot season thanks to various cultural activities. One is playing traditional games with friends and family at a summer festival. These Japanese festival games aren’t just fun things to do at summer festivals but also some of the best childhood memories for some Japanese people.
After visiting a Japanese yatai (food stall) for festive food and before enjoying the fireworks, it’s time to enjoy some games. Let’s explore some Japanese festival games – another specialty of the Japanese summer festival!
Goldfish Scooping (Kingyo Sukui)
This is one of the most typical games at summer festivals in Japan. It’s a simple game of catching goldfish in a tank with a paper racket that is easy to tear apart. Because the racket is made of paper, it gets wet when immersed in water and tears immediately if there’s a strong impact.
So, although it seems easy, catching the fish takes a bit of skill and technique. As this is a difficult game for children, some kind shop owners still give goldfish to the children to bring back even if they can’t catch anything.
This game has been around for a long time, but others are even older than it. Check out these traditional Japanese games to learn about more classic games!
Super Ball Scooping (Suupaa boru sukui)
Super balls are rubber balls with great elasticity that people place in a water tank. Bouncing balls are also a common game in Japanese summer festivals. Like the goldfish scooping game, players must use a paper racket to pick the balls up.
Some people even use blowers to make the balls float around in the water to increase the difficulty. This is also a popular game at summer festivals for children excited by the colorful balls floating in the water.
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Underwater Coin Dropping (Suichuu Coin Otoshi)
In this game, a deep-water tank has a bowl or plate at the bottom. The players compete by dropping coins into the bowl to see who has more coins landed right in the bowl. The game’s difficulty can be adjusted by choosing different sizes of bowls or placing them in different depths of the tank. The smaller the bowl and the deeper the tank, the harder it gets.
Ring toss (Wanage）
Ring toss is a game where players toss rings to the prize they want to get. The prizes are usually presented in numbers on each pillar, on the floor’s surface. It’s tricky, but you usually get three to five chances to challenge your luck!
Shooting (Shateki)
Shooting is a game that uses an air gun with paper button bullets to shoot down prizes. The player will try to shoot down children’s toys, candies, or sometimes even jewelry and receive the item they shoot down as a reward. At the festival, the shooting games corner is often the most exciting and crowded place as people compete to see who’s the better shot or hunt down targets as gifts for each other.
Fishing yoyo (yo-yo tsuri)
Yo-yo, in this case, refers to a small rubber ball-like balloon that contains water and air inside. One end of the ball is tied with a string, and the other end has holes to slip onto the finger, or for this game, to fish. At summer festivals, you can often buy a yo-yo directly or play the yoyo fishing games instead.
In the game, yo-yos are placed in a water tank. The player uses a W-shaped paper band to fish up and “catch” one of the yo-yos. At a Japanese natsu matsuri (summer festival), many people, especially children, wear eye-catching, colorful yo-yo balls.
Katanuki
Katanuki is a game that uses a rectangular candy mold made of sugar and flour and a pre-shaped mold that forms shapes such as animals, stars, trees, flowers, and more. The player uses a needle to engrave the outline on that mold and separate the shape from the mold. Although it’s made of sugar and flour, the candy mold is not used for eating but for playing, and it’s pretty easy to crack, so players have to be very careful.
In addition to Japanese festivals, katanuki are available at small snack shops, but it’s rare. If you’ve ever watched Squid Game – a Korean survival drama on Netflix – you can imagine how hard the game is – even for adults! Does your country have similar games to these Japanese festival games? If so, please share your most fun childhood game in the comments below!
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There are way more other games in Japan than this! Trust me, I have a Japanese background. I also speak Japanese. This is not all.
Of course! There are all kinds of games in Japan! This is why we are narrowing it down to Japanese games that you play at summer festivals! Thank you for reading!