Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

My town, Aioi, is kind of a sleeping town. About 30,000 live here, but a great many commute to neighboring towns to go to work. But, once a year, Aioi puts on a great festival called the Peron Matsuri (festival). The festival includes fireworks, boat races, parades, and a city-wide festival atmosphere. The rest of the year, you can see evidence of the festival. For example, there are pictures of these boats all over town. In the sidewalks, there are imprints of the boats. At the station, there are pictures of them. It is Aioi's one day a year to shine. People come from around the area to attend the festival. So, I was really excited about finally being able to attend my town's big day. Akemi came down from Osaka to be at the event. One of my friends in Aioi, Matt, played traditional Japanese taiko drums. Another friend, Jeff, was a member of a team that raced a boat. And, some Japanese friends from Minato-ya okonomiyaki shop were racing on other boat teams. It was really neat.

Here is one of the "peron" boats. It is situated in the train station in Aioi, where visitors to the town will see it just after getting off the shinkansen (bullet train).

When they paddle these, somebody beats on this drum to keep the time.

Barbecue

In the morning, we had a barbecue at the little park a block from my home. Mr. Minato organized the barbecue. Several members of his immediate and extended family came, as well as foreigners from around the area. It was lots of fun. We barbecued steak, chicken, vegetables, rice balls (onigiri), sausages, corn, fish, shrimp, and whatever else people brought. We played with Mr. Minato's son and nephew, who are around 10 years old.

A group picture at the barbecue, minus a few absent people such as the person taking the picture (me).

Walking to the fireworks

After the barbecue, we walked down to the fireworks, about 2 miles. Almost all the spectators walked from the train station or wherever.

There was a surpising number of police officers, most in riot gear. Crowd control, fine. But, riot gear? What were they thinking. I've heard maybe 20,000 people attended the fireworks. That's a lot, but I don't see the potential for a riot.

Helmets? Jaw protection? (Probably) bullet-proof Kevlar vests?

Notice also the creepy looking grey paddy wagon on the right. It's the one with no windows. It looks like something out of World War I.

This was even more security than what I saw at the cherry blossom viewing at the Osaka Mint

I saw these illuminated advertisements flying in the air. At least one of them is about a gas company.

The Fireworks

Japanese fireworks are known to be some of the best in the world, if not the best. And, these ones were outstanding. But, what was interesting was the format of the show. In Seattle, our Fourth Of July display is a 30 minute continuous show with music. Here in Japan, there was no music. And, the fireworks were split into 10 ≈10 minute shows. In between the shows was an explanation of the previous show and an introduction of the following show. The explanation was only about a minute, so it wasn't really disruptive. It was really quite nice.

A couple years ago, I took pictures of the fireworks in Seattle. I spent much of the time taking pictures. I bought a tripod and made something of a production of it. They came out good. (Try here, here or here.) But, it took away from the experience a bit. This year, I made up my mind to take some pictures, but keep it really low key and not let it interfere in any way with our enjoyment of the fireworks. So, these pictures aren't all that hot.

Actually, the fireworks were beautiful. Just a few highlights. There were two shows in which they made formations in the sky of things like hearts, smiles, flying ducks, and cranes. (Or at least that's what I think they were.) In other shows, they used a special machine which shoots of a small shell every 0.1 seconds. It creates a very interesting effect. In other shows, perhaps my favorite, they shot the fireworks very low, so about ⅓ of them went right into the water of the harbor. But, having them so close to the water meant absolutely gorgeous reflections. And, in the grand finale, they used two separate barges to fill the whole sky with white fireworks. It was huge. Everywhere you looked, the sky was lit up with great fireworks. And, through all this, we were only a few feet (a meter or so) from the water, so it looked like they were going to fall on us. Akemi noted that she could practically reach out and grab the fireworks out of the sky.

Aioi fireworks - this one was a real screw-up, but it looks pretty cool, I think. I moved my hand too much while doing a time exposure photo.

Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

5/28/2005, Aioi Peron Matsuri (Festival) day 1: fireworks

Barbecue

Walking to the fireworks

The Fireworks