This weekend, on October 8^th and 9^th, the annual Seki Cutlery Festival will be held in Seki City in central Gifu! Well-known internationally for its high-quality products, Seki has a history and tradition of excellence in blade-making that extends back over 700 years. Of course, in the past this blade-making tradition was focused on the production of Japanese swords and made Gifu the hub of that industry. With the coming of the modern age, those skills and that know-how were applied to products like kitchen knives, and resulted in comparably sparkling (and sharp!) results. The Cutlery Festival is not only meant to show off what the city has to offer in terms of modern-day blades; it is also a celebration of Seki's more traditional blade-forging history, and so at this event you can enjoy blades of both the past and the present!

At this event, you will find stall after stall selling Seki cutlery at lower prices than you will ever find anywhere else, sword forging and polishing demonstrations, sword cutting and unsheathing demonstrations, and many more such exhibitions that you will only find in the city of blades, Seki! Of course, as befits a Japanese festival, there will be taiko drum performances and others as well. Definitely an event not to be missed!

Seki can be accessed easily by bus from the Gifu Station Bus Terminal or by train via the Nagaragawa Railway.