Dozens of young ladies dressed in yukata
yesterday couldn't be wrong.
After checking quickly in a brochure available at the metro station, there
were indeed some fireworks in Gaienmae yesterday night.
It is indeed the big season for fireworkds and Japanese just love them.
If you're good enough, I think you can manage to see one per week. If you
don't want to miss any, make sure you check this page, which gives a lot
of useful information about fireworks in Japan.
We usually don't go to fireworks because of the crowd: it is just impossible to find your way to a nice spot and instead, you are most likely to be standing in the middle of hundreds of other people, willing to watch the show in spite of the heat and the sweaty atmosphere.
However, this one was so close to our place that we couldn't miss it, even if we wanted to: the sound of the fireworks was propagating throughout all the neighborhood and the lights were flashing the walls of the buildings around in red and green.
We finally ended up finding quite a good spot, in the middle of the street,
to watch the fireworks through the electric cables.
Obviously, we were not as lucky as those people in the picture, who were
having dinner on the roof, but that was quite alright at that time.
It is only when we thought it was over that
we decided to walk around and found an even better spot, with a nice and clear
view.
One of the reasons it was not crowded is probably that you had a nice view not
only on the fireworks, but also on the graveyard below, but that was not what
was going to stop a gaijin that I am...
Unfortunately, I didn't have time to setup my camera before the fireworks would actually end, that's why the pictures are a bit blurry...
I'll make sure I remember that for the next fireworks ... next year.
As Obon,
the equivalent for All Saint's day in Japan, is getting closer (usually
mid-August), you can find festivals (matsuri in Japanese) a bit everywhere in
town recently.
This one was celebrated in a junior high school in Jingumae, just by my place.
It is always a pleasure to attend that kind of events: they remind me how much Japanese are still close to each other, as if they were still living in a small village and everybody knew each other.
The main attraction is a
traditional dance in the middle of the courtyard, performed by both
experienced dancers and people in the audience, who would like to learn the
dance and enjoy dancing altogether.
The little girl in the picture was dressed in a summer yukata for children made of very light cloth, which design is probably an heritage from the past, perfectly suited for celebrations during warm evenings like at this time of the year.
