Fireworks Festival

On Sunday night, there was a giant fireworks festival in a place called Ichikawadaimon. It translates to something about a river. A bunch of the English Teachers from all around Yamanashi were going, so I jumped in my car, then onto a train and then on to the festival. When I got to the Kofu station to change trains, I found all the other Gaijin. Gaijin is a less than polite word for foreigner in Japanese. The politically correct term is Gaikokujin, which means someone from a foreign country. Shortening it makes it less nice. If someone at a school were to call you a gaijin, it would be considered rude. Kind of like the word Gringo in Spanish. Naturally, we call ourselves gaijin.

So there is a gaggle of gaijin waiting on this PACKED train platform. When you think of the crowded Japanese trains, you may think of the one where the people are stuffed on by guys in white gloves. That isn't too far off. We don't have guys with white gloves, but everyone is uncomfortably sandwiched in. I would have taken a picture, but my hands were above my head during the whole ride, praying to heaven that it would end.

It is kind of nice being tall, because you can find other white people really easily in a crowd, I will tell you why it is not fun being tall in just a minute. The train went for something like 45 minutes of heat and oppressive humanity all around before we were finally free. When we got off the train it was raining. The temperature was still in the 80s and it was raining. Blech. Not only are you sweating, but you are now wet and sticky. Still...it was an improvement over the train.

For some reason, this video is here now. These were little parachutes that came out of the firework and slowly floated back to the ground sparkling all the way down. It was weird because they just hung there in the air like they were magic. I know it isn't magic because this is Japan and J.K. Rowling made no mention of Asian wizards except for Cho Chang. 

The first thing I can say, is that these fireworks were BIG. Imagine your average show, and then multiply it by 4. We walked a long way to get to where the other foreigners were gathered and finally ended up sitting on a hill that looked like a channel for if there was a flood. It was a veritable sea of umbrellas and tarps. The police (equipped with blinking vests and light sabers to lead the way) finally ushered us by where we were going. 

I was starving because I just hadn't eaten much of anything, so I ventured off to find some food. I ended up getting some corn on the cob (covered in some kind of tangy sauce) and some Yakitori (chicken on a stick) that was interspersed with chewy bamboo chutes. It was expensive, but it was food. I also got some water (I have had better water pretty much anywhere I have ever been).

When I got back to the group, the show had started. Anyone who has ever tried knows how difficult it is to take pictures of fireworks, and I am not very good at any kind of pictures. Here are some of the pictures I did catch though. 

 This was my attempt to show the paper lanterns hanging all along the half mile walk that lit up the way. You see all the people with the umbrellas in this picture. Here is the problem with being tall in Japan (this is what I was hinting at earlier in the post): When you are above average height in Japan and people bring out their umbrellas to cover them, they only come up to eye level. this makes walking through a crowd with your long white legs very dangerous. I escaped with no injuries to my eyes during this perverse game of gaijin gouging though.

 This firework was so huge that my camera could not capture it all. 

 We decided to take the earlier train and miss sitting front row for the last 20 minutes or so of fireworks. This is the view from the platform. Other people who didn't leave as early ended up waiting in line to get on an impossibly packed train for over an hour. I had a seat. 

 This is from over a mile and half away. Just look how giant those things are. I don't know what we are doing in America, but we are definitely losing the fireworks arm race. I am calling for a new cold war. 

That all being said, I will say that the Japanese have got to work on their presentation. I mean, this fireworks show went for over an hour and a half. I tire of fireworks like anyone else, but they would sit and narrate for 5-10 minutes before they would shoot off a few and then more talking. Granted, all of the talking was in Japanese, so it was especially boring, but still. I think we need to fly the Blue Angels over to Japan and show them how to put on a show...