About Higashi Hongan-ji Temple’s Civic Green Space (Ohigashi-san Hiroba Square)

As we shared last month, we have our 10 year anniversary festival, and we are now within 3 months of it taking place! We will be giving a more substantial post about lineups in a couple of weeks but, for now, we wanted to share a bit about where the event will take place, which we think is a particularly cool spot for a beer festival!

We will be hosting at Higashi Honganji Temple, in the large new green space in front of the temple gates. The reason we reached out and chose this spot is for a few reasons. One being simply that we wanted an accessible place that is large enough for an event of decent size, and which wouldn’t get too cramped and crowded.

The bigger reason, though, is that we have a connection to this place from when we were invited to create a beer as a part of a promotional drive to gain awareness of the project, which aimed to update the area in front of the grand gate entrance to one of Kyoto’s biggest temples, which is also one of the largest wooden structures on the planet.

The idea for the space was that it could become a valuable one for the local community, and also one where events could be hosted that being people to the area, but also create a great chance for mingling of those from near and far. And so why not create such an event ourselves?

The area is 9,800 square metres, and features in the centre a large fountain, around which there is a big open space, and this is in turn flanked by two large wooded areas of grassland (a rare commodity in Japan!) which we see as being an awesome spot for sitting down with a beer, and also hope will make the event also a great family-friendly one, too. Rather than a bustling crowded event, we wanted people to have lots of room to chill in addition to enjoying the liveliness and energy.

The space will also mean that we can get a good number of food options in, many of which regulars to our taproom will be familiar with, in the form of the kitchen cars that frequent our humble brewery on Fridays and weekends. There will also be plenty of space to enjoy them, along with the many beer booths that will be set up, as there will also be plenty of space for large tents for customers wishing to stay out of the heat, or in case we end up getting some rain.

To avoid lines, we will be setting up an online site for purchasing advance tickets, which we will share over the coming weeks, in addition to sharing the most important information: what beer can be enjoyed!