Fireworks

Fireworks are a huge part of the Japanese summer festival culture. Every weekend in the summer, especially in August, there are hundreds of fireworks festivals throughout Japan. They're always a lot of fun, and one of the highlights (at least for me) is that most of the younger women get all dressed up in their yukatas (summer kimonos) and do their makeup and hair to perfection. Very nice.
Anyways, my friend Mariko and I went to watch them last night along the Asahi River. They lasted for an hour and a half, and although I've been told there are better shows in Osaka and Tokyo, it was the best fireworks display I've ever seen. It was pretty incredible. We were lucky to get a really sweet spot, although we had to stand and have people bump into us constantly. I couldn't believe how many people there were, because normally Okayama is a very quiet city, but the streets were just packed.
The display in the first picture was called Niagara Falls. They had some kind of fireworks strung along a bridge, and they changed colours, I think from red to green to yellow. It was pretty cool.
It's all part of the Momotaro Festival, and today there's supposed to be a big parade and some groups dancing, so I'm going to go check that out later this afternoon.
As a bonus, here's a little Japanese lesson for you. Fireworks, hanabi in Japanese, is written with 2 Chinese characters,花, read hana, meaning flower, and 火, read bi, meaning fire, so it translates literally as flower fire.