Tokyo Summer Fireworks Festivals

One of a few fireworks displays that were made to resemble
characters from Pokemon.  

One of the best things about the summer in Japan is the incredible fireworks festivals that are held absolutely everywhere. This year I had a chance to hit two of them. One of them in Tokyo bay, near my buddy Pepe's place and another in Saitama (north of Tokyo in Itabashi-ku). Having been here for over 10 years now, seeing and hearing fireworks here off in the distance or from someone's apartment has never really been a big deal more me, and as cool as it is, I could never quite see what all the fuss is over, and why Japanese people were willing to pay so much for good seats.

This time however, in partcular for the Itabashi-ku show, a friend of mine from Karate got us premiere tickets so we were front and center. At 5000 for the both of us (about $60) at first Mars wasn't too keen the fact that I had actually shelled out for seats, but as soon as the show started, it was obvious that the seats were well worth it. Instead of experiencing the show as distant entertainment, we were so close we could watch the whole thing laying on our backs. In addition to the insanely sweet view, when they popped you could actually feel the shockwave coming off of the explosions, and hear it as you see it (instead of there being the usual time lag). This one was also amazing in that, there were a lot of completely unique specialty fireworks as well that were handmade by firework masters over the course of the year between seasons. Some of them were absolutely breaktaking, and cost around $10,000 each.

The fact that we were also with friends, and had food, drinks and beer made the experience all the more enjoyable. Even though the view wasn't as good, the Tokyo Bay one was also super cool because we were right outside of my buddy Pepe's place, so we could just go to his place to use the toilet instead of having to use the usual port-a-potty's. It was also great because I was with some of my best and longest friends here, and Pepe's wife and Mari prepared some amazing food before we went out to his "front yard" to watch it.

There was one more festival that I really wanted to get to at Futakotamagawa (which is walking distance from my own place),and I ended up missing that one, but even so, this season I still got to enjoy one of Japan's top summer highlights more so than I ever have before.