Obon

Obon
Appearance	New Leaf
Occurs	15th or 16th of August
Special character	Isabelle

Obon (お盆, Bon Festival^?) is a Japanese event in New Leaf. It falls on the 15^th August, or 16^th August if the 15^th is a Sunday.

Events

In New Leaf, the event features a face-cutout and a present from Isabelle. Isabelle may give the player either a Cucumber Horse (きゅうりのうま) or an Eggplant Cow (なすびのうし) as a gift when she is spoken to. They cannot be re-ordered from the catalog inside any of the Nookling Stores (excluding Nookling Junction). These items were previously available in Japan as distributed items in City Folk.

Isabelle's Dialogue In New Leaf

During the Obon, the following dialogue is spoken to the visitors:

• "Oh my! Thank you for coming all the way to <Town name> today! Today is Obon, the day we pay tribute to our ancestors. There's no need to be all solemn, though. Please enjoy your time here just as you usually would! That reminds me! Since you came all this way, why don't you take home an Obon decoration with you? The younger kids in our town make these to celebrate Obon and pay respect to their ancestors. (Sending a present) Doesn't it sort of look like it's in the shape of an animal? They're made out of summer vegetables."
• "My father and mother each had a father and mother. They each had their own father and mother with fathers and mothers of their own... That's a long list of relatives!"
• "I did some research on the decoration used for Obon... The cucumber horse is made by sticking broken chopsticks into it. It represents how we'd love for a horse to bring our ancestors to us as quickly as possible! Horses are fast, so the thought is this horse will bring them to us right away!"
• "I did some research on the decoration used for Obon... The eggplant cow is made by sticking broken chopsticks into it. It represents how once our ancestors are here, we don't want them to leave too fast. Cows are slower, so the thought is the cow can't carry them away too quickly!"
• "I'd like to think that our ancestors would be proud of the way we've taken good care of <Town name>!"

Isabelle and a standee for Obon.

Isabelle introducing the player to Obon.

Cucumber horse shown in catalog.

Eggplant cow shown in catalog.

Further Information

Obon is traditionally a Buddhist practice to honor a family's dead relatives, but has turned into a family reunion holiday in Japan in the modern day. For more, click here for a in-depth Wikipedia article.