Adachi Fireworks

After work today, I went to Adachi with Laura, the American grad student I'm working with this summer. She had seen online that there was supposed to be a fireworks festival from 7:15 - 8:45pm. Not having any clue what to expect, we figured we'd go and see, since there is going to be another big festival on Saturday. This was our practice run.

The place wasn't far, only a few stops on the train and then a few more on the subway. Tokyo is really easy to navigate on the public transportation if you have a decent idea of where you're headed. While waiting for Laura to meet me at the subway stop, I started noticing ton of people, male and female, in kimonos. It made me think of Oktoberfest where a lot of people, including many of the younger generation, wore traditional Bavarian clothing, lederhosen and dirndls everywhere. I'll also say that those lederhosen were expensive, the Germans wear darker color leather, that's partially how you can tell them from the tourists.

Anyway, I was watching all this kids, mostly girls, walking around in kimonos and traditional wooden sandals and it struck me that it was akin to people in the US dressing up like colonists for the 4th of July. It sort of stinks that we don't have any traditions like that, but at the same time, it's not such a big deal.

Back to the story. When Laura arrived we also sort of realized that everyone was heading to Adachi for these fireworks. This lead to my first experience of being packed in the subway like a sardine. Luckily for us, our car wasn't so full, but the train that left before ours had to have the transit workers help push the people in for the doors to close. Adachi was only 2 stops from Nishi-Nippori so we weren't crushed in for long. Once we got out of the subway, people had sort of fanned out so you weren't as overwhelmed by the numbers. We just followed the crowds and then eventually the sound of fireworks.

Now, when I said the festival went for an hour and a half, I mean there were fireworks in the air exploding for an hour and a half. This year was apparently special too, because it was the 30th anniversary of this festival or something like that. They had about 15,000 fireworks. Now, I might be exaggerating a little when I say there were always fireworks in the air, but I'm not when I say it went on for a long time. There were a few lulls in the action, but for the most part it was ridiculous. I saw at least 4-5 displays that were equivalent to a finale in the US. Some of the fireworks I saw I had never seen before, some were just regular but there were so many of them the entire sky was brightened. They had shot so many up and had them exploding simultaneously that it was really impressive.

I had been warned by WayWay in the lab, that somehow Japanese people tend to overreact to fireworks. Tonight I saw what she meant. Every time there was something mildly impressive, a great "Aaaaahhhhhh" went up all over the area where we were watching. We didn't even get that close to the fireworks because we had gotten there a bit late and there were so many people.

I'll just say that if Adachi could put on such a show on a Thursday night, I'm really looking forward to seeing what Asakusa comes up with on Saturday.