Wednesday night saw a special student family group meeting with fireworks and ramen (not at the same time, of course).
It’s been raining most of the time all this week. Wednesday was no exception, but for whatever reason the rain stopped in the afternoon and remained absent through the entire evening.
This all meant that the planned fireworks expedition for student family group got the green light. The ten of us who were at the church at 20:00 piled into Matt and Pastor Goto’s cars and headed to the site of our outdoor worship service on Easter. A large dirt field next to the open park-like area served as a safe ground for a variety of fireworks fun. I took a few dozen pictures with the slow-shutter setting on my camera and picked out the best ones for your viewing pleasure in the photo album.
Fireworks in Japan have some good and bad points when compared to fireworks in America. They big, flashy (read: more dangerous) fireworks like artillery shells don’t seem to be sold over here—all I’ve seen are sparklers (everyone likes sparklers!) and various fountains. But fireworks in Japan are sold for a longer time than in America, so if you feel like doing fireworks at any time in the summer it’s easy to stop by your local department store and pick up a package or two.
As far as the legality of fireworks, it seems to be okay to do fireworks anywhere as long as a no-fireworks sign isn’t posted and the police don’t tell you to stop. We were well away from any buildings and next to the Asahi river, so our location last night was pretty ideal. Naturally if you don’t get caught you can do fireworks wherever you want, so occasionally some people will set off a few things at the Sports Park late at night.