Summer is here!! Heatwaves yeah! 37 degrees during the day, 30 during the night and at least 33 degrees inside! Hooray for airconditioning :D
No but summer also brings some very cool things (pun intended): Festivals and awesome fireworks!
Near our house is Osaka’s most important shrine, the Tenmangu shrine, and every year one of Japan’s biggest festivals is held there: Tenjin Matsuri. That means: beer, food, music and people in traditional costumes pulling giant carts through the streets!
O and fireworks of course, and since we have an awesome view over the city we could sit on our balcony, enjoy a nice cold beer and admire the fireworks :-)
But there is more! Because the fireworks of Tenjin Matsuri were tiny, compared to the spectacle of the Yodogawa Fireworks Show! This show is run by locals since the 80’s and held on the river north of Umeda, about an hour walk from our house. It’s a full hour of the biggest fireworks you have ever seen, and ofcourse I wanted to go there! So we went there, alongside 500.000 other people. You know I’m not kidding about that number?
Yes, A LOT OF PEOPLE. Also, we were sitting on the riverbanks, right on top of tall grass, and I think we ruined a whole ecosystems there. The giant grasshoppers, spiders, toads and even praying mantises did not know where to go so they would jump all over us. The lady next to us would grab them by the legs and throw them at us and the girls behind us ” for fun” :-S
But the fireworks were amaaaazing! So immensely huge they filled up the whole sky!
You could feel the bangs in your chest. It was fantastic!!
And then we all went back, all 500.000 of us, through a tiny exit.