Celebrating the Canberra and Nara Sister City relationship, the Canberra Nara Candle Festival shares the values of peace and goodwill across two cities. The annual festival is based upon a much larger candle festival, the Nara ‘Tokae’, which is held in Nara, Japan.
Held in October each year, the Canberra Nara Candle Festival has grown in popularity, showing the warm regard that Canberrans have for Nara and the lively interest Australians have in all aspects of Japanese culture. Highlights of the festival include Japanese food and cultural activities such as calligraphy, origami, lantern-making, martial arts demonstrations and entertainment.
The centrepiece of the festival is a display of 2,000 candles which are lit at dusk by festival volunteers, and create a beautiful river of candle light weaving its way around the Nara Peace Park.
Join the celebrations this October, on the afternoon of Saturday 28 October 2017.
For program details visit events.act.gov.au/nara