Fire Flowers

This weekend on Saturday, I had a very nice Japanese cultural day. First I went and watched a 'Noh' theater show. Noh is the traditional type of Japanese theater that involves people wearing masks. The show had two stories. The first was a comedy about a country man wanting to buy Buddhist statues and getting swindled by city peddlers. The second was an epic style story that invovled a band of warriors going to a mountain to slay an ogre. It was pretty bad ass. Plus they had english subtitles available on little mini-screens...so i was able to completely understand what was going on. These shows use old school Japanese...so sometimes its even hard to understand for Japanese people.

While I watched this show with host mom and bro, host dad went to Tokyo Bay to reserve seats for us for a 'Hanabi' show. Hanabi literally translates into Fire Flowers, but we know it as fireworks. I thought it was a bit strange that he would leave so early to reserve seats but now i understand why. It was CRAZY crowded. People were wearing yukatas, doing little picnics in the middle of the street, and waiting for hours for the fireworks show.

The fireworks show definitely did not disappoint. I recorded a couple videos as a part of a video blog for your enjoyment. All in all, the show lasted an hour and a half! My host dad said they usually have over 20,000 fireworks go off for shows of this magnitude. They had fireworks ive never seen...and im not sure if its because i was sitting really close but they also seemed a lot bigger. They even had happy face and heart shaped fireworks.