Fireworks Festival

Hey everybody! This post is a little late, since I went to the fireworks festival on Saturday night, but better late than never, right?

The festival took place at a city about twenty minutes by train from where I live. I went with a bunch of other JETs and got to wear a borrowed yukata (summer kimono). I learned one important thing from this trip, and that's that if I want attention (that is, more than I usually get by being a foreigner in Japan), I should wear a yukata. Everybody was saying hello to me and striking up conversation. I guess it's because I'm tall, blondish, and rather obviously not Japanese. But everybodyI passed, from old people to students, really seemed to like the sight of me in a yukata.

But enough about clothes. Let's talk about the best part of summer festivals: the food!


Festivals have lines upon lines of stands like the one below that sell food. Standard festival food includes lots of fried meat on a stick and shaved ice. The red stand in the picture below sold takoyaki, aka fried octopus balls!


More fried food! Although I think on the left there they're selling fruit. Candied fruit on a stick also makes appearances at festivals.

And of course the fireworks were amazing. I wish I could've gotten a picture of the smiley-face shaped ones, but I didn't manage it. Below are some of the pictures that turned out best, but of course they don't do justice to being there!




Since summer is almost over, the summer festival season is coming to a close. But that only means that harvest festivals are coming up! My home town has a bunch of these, and I'll hopefully go to one soon.