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One year ago: Kashiwa shrine

Summer in Japan is not only the time of the local matsuri festivals, it's also the time for great firework events. So the day before yesterday, one year ago, I decided to join the 'hanabi taikai', a big firework in Asakusa, Tokyo. Cause sun rises rather early in Japan, firework is held around 8 or 9 pm, usually, but still plenty of time to do other things before.

Hello Kitty & friends

So on my way from Arakawoki in the north of Tokyo, I stopped first in Kashiwa. Kashiwa is at the northern border of Tokyo suburbs. It's still in Chiba prefecture, but there is no free space till Tokyo, only concrete...

One year ago: Jizo statue at Z…

Around Kashiwa station itself it looks like every station in Tokyo area, lot's of big department stores, shops, restaurants and so on. So nothing special in principle. But day the local matsuri was held, so I walked around a little bit, had a look at the local shrine and at the stalls selling food, drinks, sweets or toys. The main attraction, the carrying of the mikoshi through the streets had not started, so left and went further south to Tokyo.

One year ago: Little Jizo with…

In Tokyo I went out at Tamachi station. It's in the southeast on the Yamanote ring line, near Tokyo bay. From their I walked to the west, in direction to Roppongi hills, one of the main spots in Tokyo, popular especially for westerners living in or visiting Tokyo. You find there shops with western food and other consumables. Very expensive place to live...

One year ago: Little Jizu stan…

But I stopped before, at Zoji-ji, a buddhist temple in the shadow of Tokyo tower, Tokyo's small version of the Eiffel tower. I went there cause of the long rows of Jizu statues with their red caps and windmills in their hands. This little guys look rather funny, but are symbols of sad things. If child dies, born or unborn, the parents can rent a Jizu statue at a temple, then it will get a red cap and the parents can put flowers or the most loved toys of their child there, so it's like grave a memorial place. It's a strange ritual for western people used to mourning and sadness if death comes to their families. But in some sense it's maybe more suitable.

One year ago: Tokyo Tower

After taking some pictures of the Jizu I went to Tokyo tower, but did not enter. In two years Japan we never managed it to went up to the top :(

One year ago: Behind the scene…

From their I took the train to Asakusa. That's one of the most famous tourists spots in Tokyo. Around the Senso-ji temple with it's well known entrance gate with the huge lampion inside, the high pagoda and the main hall you can buy anything you have in mind thinking of Japan. There're shops for kimono, yukata, geta, katana and all the other japanese stuff tourists want to buy...

One year ago: Police girl

But not Senso-ji was the place I wanted to go, it was the Sumidagawa, one of the main rivers in Tokyo. A long it's shores the firework was held. The event was called "hanabi taikai" where as 'hanabi' (sorry that I'm to lazy to switch on the kanji mode) stands for firework. It consists of two parts 'hana' which means 'flower' or 'blossom' and 'bi' which means 'fire'. So the whole means literally 'fire blossom" which describes it very well, I would say.

One year ago: The thing on the…

Even though I had two or three hours until the firework was intended to start, the place was rather crowded already. Lots of streets were blocked and they just started to slowly close the bridges. But really slowly. It took more than an hour and they didn't blocked it at once, they just narrowed it more and more in several turns. I waited there until the last turn, so I crossed the bridge with a row of policemen behind me. But that's no problem their, everything is very friendly and nobody is aggressive. That's completely different from my last firework experiences here in Germany, in Bonn, Dusseldorf and Cologne. Everyone is eager to get the best place, people are very aggressive (on man starts half a way to knock me down cause he thought I was steeling his place). Too much stupid folks are around here. I'm not sure if I will go their again next year...

One year ago: On the way

Back to Tokyo. I decided to search for a good place at the northeast side of the river, and first waited in a crowed of young people sitting around in their yukata, waiting for the firework. As so often, when they saw my camera they started laughing and posed while showing me the 'v' sign with their fingers. It's hard to take a picture of Japanese people not showing this 'v' :)

One year ago: give me a 'V'

But when the firework started, I noticed I had chosen a bad place. Half of the rockets vanished behind the high building next to the bridge along the river. So I started searching for a better place. First I went away from the river and then in northwest direction back to it. So I was some hundred meters away from the bridge. There I was standing, having a perfect view on the firework, in a crowed of young people, that was no problem, beside that the place was not meant for staying around. But always when a policeman came, I suddenly forgot all of my Japanese language skills (not very high anyway...), so I made it their up to the end of the firework.

Hanabi Taikai

Maybe you're wondering that I had the time to walk around searching for a good place. But that was no problem at all. I looked at the time when I took the firework pictures. It was about 80 minutes between the first and the last one! So people here get exited when a firework took 30 minutes, that was almost 3 times longer...

One year ago: Hanabi Taikai

When it is was over I started slowly to move back to Asakusa station. Still taking some pictures, so when I arrived their, it was nearly as worse as I had expected, concerning the amount of people around. But Japanese are used to organize the movement of huge crowds of people and while the people themselves are patient enough, everything goes very smoothly. That's what I loved Japan for, avoiding unnecessary trouble, while the aggressive egoism here produces always trouble. Even with much less people around here, you have much more stress moving around. I really don't like it...

 

One year ago: Going home

The 'hanabi taikai' was one of three firework events I joined in Japan. The next day we went to the small city of Oyama for the firework, and the year before we joined the national fireworks contest in Tsuchiura. It's the final event of each firework season and maybe the most impressive one cause of the variety of styles you can see there.

One year ago: the firework is…

That's all I have to write, beside to wish you much fun with the pictures around :)