Toyota Fireworks party...

There's tons of summer festivals going on in Japan at the moment, and that means tons of fireworks going off. On Sunday, Toyota City had one of the biggest ones, with 15000 fireworks going off over two hours! I headed down there with Mari, one of the school directors - the train down was absolutely rammed with people, most of whom were wearing yukatas or jimbeis and looking very cool (not literally though - apparently it gets pretty toasty in them). It's not surprisingly, but Japanese people really pull of these traditional clothes well - the women look stunning in their yukatas, and the guys look pretty snazzy too.

Here's Mari in hers:

I wanted to get a few photos of random people in their yukatas too, but I only managed to get one in the end as everyone was watching the fireworks!

Aah, cute (and younger than I realised from the back - they probably thought I was a dirty gaijin perv. Which of course I'm not)

The streets were packed as you can see:



But there fireworks were amazing! Whereas in England we just say "oooh" and "aaah" to fireworks, the Japanese let out this constant exclamations of "pretty!" or "cool!" or "big!" (when it's a huge flash type one). Each time they do, it's like the first time they've seen fireworks; they sound completely surprised by each one even though the show was going on for two hours. If the firework goes off once, then has lots of smaller explosions after, the exclamations stack up: "Cool! Ah, coolcool coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool!!!!". It's all very charming.





The firework show was also a notable cultural contrast to the UK in how people behaved there - despite it being really crowded, everyone was very considerate and didn't stand in other people's way or sit down in stupid places so you couldn't walk. Getting to the trains afterwards was also very organised and easy - the police had it all sorted and controlled the massive flow of people into the station, then onto the platforms and into the trains so we got home very quickly. I think it's going to be a shock for me to get back on the Tube in London....!