Christmas in August

August is a popular time for festivals in Japan. In August I went with some friends to one of the most famous firework festivals in Japan, located in Akita Prefecture. As the festival is very famous and this was its 100 year anniversary (not to mention Akita Prefecture is several hours away from where I live), going to the festival required leaving on a Saturday morning at 7:30 am. A very scenic, sometimes slow 7-8 hour car ride later (もちろん the traffic got worse as we got closer to our destination) we arrived at the festival only to discover that though we had arrived over 3 hours early for the main show, there was absolutely no seating available in the main viewing area (aka: a grassy field). However, we did manage to secure a nook in another grassy spot by some trees and eventually moved to sit at the feet of some people standing in front of a fence.
Fortunately, there was a reason it was so crowded and we were sitting on the ground, constantly in danger of being tripped over by passerby who were eagerly making their way toward the yaki-soba, battered octopus ball or fried chicken stands. That reason is that the Akita Firework Festival was a fantastic 2 and 1/2 hour show of fireworks to songs where each song had a finale that was better than the grand finale of any fireworks show I have ever seen. Seriously, I have never seen so many fireworks in my life. We did not even stay for the grand finale because we wanted to have a fighting chance to actually get home that evening (and we did, eventually).

Here are a few videos of my favorite parts of the show. The first video (which should be embedded on this page) is of the finale of one of the songs early on in the show. The second (the link below) was by far my favorite song in the show, a summer favorite everywhere: "Happy Xmas (War is Over)."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4osDJSE6YM0