flowerfires

8 august 2005

hanabi (flowerfires), or fireworks, in japan are not held in reserve for one special holiday. nor are they simply a sideshow for some other event. they are festival worthy in themselves and the month of august is host to many shows throughout the country. tens of thousands of people descend onto parks or rivers, dressed in yukatas with bentos, beer and blankets in hand.

john, gareth, aiko and myself attended the biggest festival in our area on the 5th of august. it was held in the small town of kurume just south of fukuoka. there were over 18,000 fireworks in a two hour show. we arrived at about 5pm and left at 10pm. it was a firework display like none i've seen before. the sheer size of some are undescribable. it really seemed at some points that we were actually in the explosions, rather than sitting on a blanket on the ground some 250 yards away.

aiko and i both wore yukatas. the boys did not. the yukata is the 'casual' summer kimono traditionally worn to summer festivals and celebrations. it is made of cotton and supposedly much more comfortable and light weight than a kimono, but it was quite hot and awkward for me. the geta, or wooden flipflops, are incedibly poorly designed. i'm sure that if they were introduced in america, some woman would surely sue for damage to her feet. perhaps they would be banned by a consumer protection agency and they in turn would sue japan for creating them. mine came with my yukata and obi in a set, so i dutifully wore them to the hanabi show. i had planned ahead and brought my own sandals with me, so as soon as we reached kurume, i promptly changed and sighed with relief.

the night before, thursday the 4th, john and i went on a 1.5 hour cruise of the harbor with our friend andrew. the cruise was on an open decked ferry with a yakitori grill and drinks. we saw three seperate displays of hanabi around the bay, relaxed and enjoyed the breeze. these displays were much smaller and shorter than those at kurume, but very enjoyable all the same.

any one who knows me well, knows that my biggest pet peeve is people complaining about the weather. i've always tried to bite my tongue on the few occasions when mother nature has really spoiled my plans or been particularly nasty. but, i have to say it, the weather has been incredibly hot. it stays between 32-35 degrees celsius. i think that's in the nineties fareheit, but to be honest i don't want to know. it's quite uncomfortable and it doesn't really cool down at night. the humidity is like soup and we haven't been able to see the mountains that surround the city because of it for some time now. this is why no one has heard from us lately: we've been existing in a slightly unconscious state of task-at-hand survival mode. we can wake up, attend work, eat and that's about it. occasionally the air conditioning manages to sharpen our senses a bit and we gain enough wits to say hello to eachother or to write an email or call home. those days are nice. this is supposed to last until late september, so wish us luck.

fighting the cloud of heat induced stupor, we managed to plan a trip to the beach a few weeks ago. we traveled just 30 minutes north by train on the west side of kyushu, which borders the sea of japan. john and i went running to the water to jump in and cool off, but to our dismay the water was like bath water. no. it was like hotspring water. it was nice, but i expected the ocean to provide the kind of cold water shock one would receive by jumping into lake superior. instead i sort of felt like a limp noodle in the salt water pot that is about to boil.

so all is well, really. no earthquakes. no typhoons, yet. no wonderfully botched fishing trips (aiko has helped immensely in this area). no real news. we're just waiting for those cool nights of fall.