As my time winds down here, the number of cultural experiences or re-experiences is increasing. I guess I sense the ticking clock acutely, and so I’m trying to enjoy and soak it all in.

The first summer I was here, I caught the fireworks in Gifu. By the end of the show, my neck was hurting. Last summer I watched the Nagoya Port fireworks and didn’t even bother to blog about it. This year, because of a spontaneous Tweet by Hitomi-san (Hi-chan), I decided to go to the Okazaki fireworks.

I had kind of given up on fireworks ( 花火- Hanabi) probably because it all starts to look the same after about 10,000 explosions. This fireworks exhbition promised 20,000! I didn’t have anything going on, Hi-chan is fun, so why not go?

Wikipedia says that,

Okazaki is also well-known, and perhaps most famous for, its fireworks. The Tokugawa Shogunate restricted production of gunpowder outside of its immediate region (with few exceptions), and even today, more than seventy percent (70%) of Japan’s fireworks are designed and manufactured here. A large fireworks festival, which people from all over Japan come to see, is held annually on the first Saturday in August in the area surrounding Okazaki Castle.

I led us to the wrong train, but we got to Okazaki, found a pretty good spot to sit by the riverside, and enjoyed what a festival brings.

The scene was very crowded, as you would expect at a fireworks show.

We enjoyed the “good” food a festival has to offer as well. Karaage, frankfurters, yakisoba, beer. What more can you ask for?

The fireworks were remarkable as well, although as always I did get a little bored and my neck started to hurt. I tried a new setting on the camera, and this is the result. I’ve never enjoyed photographing fireworks anyway.

Kaoru-san came to join us, but we didn’t get together until after the show was over.

Thanks to Hi-chan and Kaoru-san for a fun night.

As part of my photographic experimentation, I now know how all the Hubble Telescope pictures have been taken? Outer space photographs? Peeshawwww. Just a bad photo at a fireworks show.