About
A festival guide that shows its work
matsuri.guide lists Japanese cultural festivals across the United States and Canada: Obon and Bon Odori, sakura festivals, matsuri, mochitsuki, Oshogatsu, temple events, and Japan Weeks.
How listings get here
We gather festival announcements from public sources: organizer pages, temple and community calendars, official flyers. Everything is checked before it publishes: a listing only goes live if a linked source page actually contains the event's name, date, and venue. If no source checks out, the listing is held back. We would rather miss an event than publish a wrong date.
Published listings are re-checked on a schedule, including twice in the final week before each event. Every event page links to its sources and to the organizer.
What the badges mean
- Not yet confirmed. We found it and the links work, but no primary source or person has confirmed the details yet. Treat it as a lead, and check with the organizer.
- Source confirmed. A citable primary source (an organizer page, flyer, or official announcement) contains these details. We checked it and link to it. This is where "verified" starts.
- Community confirmed. Several people independently confirmed the details ahead of the event.
- Organizer confirmed. The event organizer confirmed the listing. The highest tier.
Confirmation is a pre-event signal: it exists so someone planning to attend can trust a listing before they travel. Even so, always confirm with the organizer before traveling. Outdoor events can cancel for weather, and no automated system reliably catches same-day changes.
For organizers
You are the reason this site can exist, and every listing sends people to your page. If your event is listed, the "these details are correct" button on the event page lets you confirm it. If something is wrong, "report an issue" triggers a re-check. If your event is missing, submit it and it goes through the same verification as everything else. No account needed for any of this.
What we don't do
- We don't copy organizer text or photos. Descriptions are written original, and event details are facts.
- We don't guess dates. A listing without a confirmed date says so plainly.
- We don't require accounts, and we don't track individuals. Anti-abuse checks use Cloudflare Turnstile.
Who runs this
matsuri.guide is operated by Kei Crew. The idea is simple: gather listings from public sources, check each one against a citable source, and only call a listing verified once a source or a person confirms it. Every event keeps a record of the sources behind it.
Source-linked · confirmed by sources and people · organizer-friendly