Hanabi Season

It's been a busy week and these summer sniffles aren't helping. From the end of July until this weekend, there are some big fireworks on display in and around town. I went on Thursday night to the one near Gaienmae and Aoyama icchome eki. It's in the triangle between Harajuku, Shibuya and Ropponggi ekis.

There were tonnes of women in the summer yukata and some men in the jinbe. I loved the little kids in their outfits too. One of my Japanese friends told me that I could not possibly go to a Hanabi festival without wearing a yukata. So I did. Wow. It's hard to breath in those things. Maybe because I put it on myself and was totally worried about the whole piece coming apart, it may have been done overly tight. Something about pulling too tightly on the obi (think large cumberband). More on Yukata in another post.

The fireworks was pretty crowded. We were slightly to the south and away from the main action streets, so it wasn't so bad until we headed back to Shibuya eki after the fireworks. We were lucky in that we dined near the area and walked up and down the streets looking for possibly good vantage points and just by chance happened to see a small bunch of people on a rooftop terrace. Okay --- roof being the roof of the 2nd floor of a larger office building so not an extremely high roof, but still it was an elevated view. When we went to check it out, it seems that it was not a private party at all, and that there were small groups of people up there. The nice part about it was the room to maneuver with my camera. There were tall hedges for privacy from the streets below, so we all had to stand with our backs to the wall of the giant office tower behind us. But the worse part about being there and trying to take photos was that there was a lady, who wore her long hair up high on the top of her head, Pebble Flintstone style, so some of my shots were obstructed by a large blob of hair. How rude is that? Why would you go to a fireworks display and wearing your hair up high knowing that everyone was going to look up? That completely goes against everything I'd learned in Japanese culture classes about the people here going out of their way to ensure that they aren't disturbing you.

Despite the Pebbles-wannabe being on the roof, I did manage to capture some awesome pics. I have posted a few of my faves.