Hanabi

Hanabi aka fireworks over the weekend. Apparently Tsuruga has the largest fireworks display on the west side of Japan.

And boy did the people come out for it! Wow! I am glad I wasn't on one of those trains. I was waiting at the station for the Sabae school teachers to arrive and about 300 people got off of a two car train. Yuck. And of course it was 90+ and humid since its mid-August in Japan. Not the most pleasant traveling conditions I can imagine.

We parked at Kazu's office and walked a little over a kilometer to the beach to avoid the brunt of the traffic around the beach. Not a bad walk. Got to see lots of people in Yukatas (summer kimonos) which always looks cool on women and goofy on men. And downright retardulous on white men. But I digress.

Got to the beach a little after 6 and it was already packed. The fireworks are shot off of a boat parked about 500 meters off shore at Matsubara beach. The fireworks start at 730, but to get a decent place to sit you have to get there much much earlier apparently. Seems like a bunch of people made a day out of it and had a bbq in the afternoon and then stayed for the fireworks at night.

If you enlarge it you might be able to tell that there are people all the way down that beach and wrapped around the other side.


Apparently something really interesting is going on just to the right of me.

Sabae school came out in full force. Two teachers, manager, and a student came down to hang out with us. Nice. Plus Mike, the guy in the black t-shirt, is Scottish, so that made the day of my students.

Wow, that guy behind Ayumi is not happy that I am taking his picture. I wish I had known, I would have taken more of his grumpy looking ass. Oh, and Ayumi and Mamoru are eating fish cakes, which are like rolled-up fish fingers. They are pretty darned good.


Kazu, on the other hand, seems to be quite content with having his picture taken.


Mike too for that matter.


A nice sunset.

One of the cool things they do it launch floating candles to memorialize the dead. Hanabi falls during Obon which is the summer holiday where people go home to honor their ancestors. According to my sources (Japanese people) the ghosts of the ancestors come home during Obon to visit so it is important to light lanterns for them to find their way back. I don't know about all of that, but it looked pretty neat to see a bunch of floating lanterns on the ocean.




Here are some of the lanterns being launched.


I would like to say this is a picture of more lanterns being launched, but really, I think it turned out to just be a bunch of Japanese butts.


Some more lanterns just after being launched.


And here they are floating along the bay behind the water break. They eventually drift over to the pier on the right and then out to sea.


Starting to get dark and you can begin to see the glow of the lanterns.


Uh-oh! Somebody's lantern caught on fire against the pier. Thus catching all the other paper lanterns around it on fire. Somebody's ancestor is going to be pissed.

Ahh, finally dark enough to see the glowing of the lanterns on the water. Beautiful. My pictures of course do not do it justice.


The fireworks were really really good. And since they were launched over water they could launch them really low to the ground/water sometimes which was very impressive to me. Nothing like seeing fireworks that look like they are coming out of the ground.

Low launch. Maybe you can see the ship that is launching the fireworks, maybe not.

More fireworks being launched pretty darned low to the ground.




All in all, a fun night. I don't know. I mean, it was freaking fireworks. They were bright they were (not that) loud. There were tons of people. That is pretty much all there was too it.

Well, aren't I just the fucking word painter.