Author: audrey

Okay okay.

I’ve seen FOUR fireworks shows this summer, all in Tokyo city limits.  Sumidagawa, Meiji Jingu, Futakotamagawa, aaand…okay maybe just three.  I sort of saw the Tokyo bay fireworks from my apartment.

I tried to take pictures of ’em, but really…nothing I do comes close to stuff like this.

But I try!  Sumida River was round 1 – there was a strong side wind that smudged all the fireworks, and my friends were sorta positioned between a bunch of buildings.  Nice for not being smothered in crowds, not so nice for picturesque shots.

See?

After the fizzliness at Sumida River, I decided to take the adviced of more experienced folks online and get an external shutter release.  Unfortunately, I got the wireless one, which totally doesn’t work for what I was doing.  All the camera registers is “click” versus “sustained click + release.”  So I had to resort to holding breath and not twitching while leaving the camera on bulb mode.

At Futako Tamagawa (which was insanely insanely crowded), the wind was better, and I was sitting along the river bank.  Along with who knows how many thousands of people. It was so crowded, some poor gal collapsed due to … nerves? lack of oxygen?  too tightly tied of an obi?  at the train station.

But I didn’t go to watch people, I wanted to see glowing sparks and cascades o’ light!

I like this one.

This one’s not bad either.  Significant progress from previous smudginess.  Need to make the colors come out better though..

This was the finale. It was huge.  Somehow, scale is sorta lost.

But hey, ya know. You take what you can get.  And really…watching the fireworks is way more fun than taking pictures of them.  At Tamagawa, they had these announcements for every set – “These are for the children’s future!” or “Tokyo will be an Olympic city” or “The World Cup is gonna be awesome!” *

There was also a doraemon firework.  Everyone whipped out their cellphones the second they realized what it was…unfortunately the first one was the only one that was oriented properly; the subsequent rockets ended up askew.

I really like how they ended with straight up showers of golden sparkly awesome though.  Stick to the basics, people. None o’ that fancy mickey mouse business.

*paraphrased from original Japanese

Sneakers, of course.

The old ones are slowly falling, one by one…
It’s a trudge of attrition. I just walk a lot more here.
Actually, this sort of works out, because if I wear ’em out and then trash ’em, I don’t have to pack them back.

Last week was fun!

(I actually just visited one of the Izu islands this past weekend. Lots of sleeping and sand time. More on that later.)

3 earthquakes in three days. Just like all good things, right?
#1 caught me during dinner with a fellow Californian. No one else at the restaurant seemed to care either. Awesome.
#2 woke me up, had me ponder whether to scoot to a doorway or not, rattled the shelves a bit.
#3 found me sleepily brushing my teeth, and I actually convinced myself it wasn’t an earthquake. Couldn’t be bothered – I was going to be late for a meeting! So the swimming feeling in my head was just sleepiness, and the creaking sounds were from the tenants above me. Obviously.

I made the mistake of telling some people that earthquakes are kind of fun (typhoons too), and sort of offended them. After all, you know, people die (and are dying) because of these things. Just because all I experience is a gentle rolling and some minor excitement doesn’t mean I shouldn’t spend every moment pondering if there are serious ramifications elsewhere in the world. I think I’m going to find a corner and flog myself in penance.

Actually, now I feel this has tottered from serious to the not-taking-it-seriously-enough end again. Difficult. You can’t win with these things.

On a lighter note, I recently sent an email to a bunch of friends, ridden with horrible English language errors. It would seem that even though I’m not totally totally immersed in Japanese here, diluted environment still leaches my English skillz away. There was stuff there that annoys the heck out of ME – misused it’s and semi-conjugations and…very very sad.