PRIME 2007: 淀川花火 [Yodogawa Hanabi]

After 姫路城, we traveled back to downtown 大阪 for the 淀川花火, which was a highly reccomended イベント (event) by both the graduate students as well as 伊達先生. We decided that it was not one we're going to miss. It's the biggest fireworks display in 大阪 which lasts about one hour in duration totalling approximately 20,000 shots of fireworks in the sky. In a very environmentally-conscious country, the birds must have been really sad that day. :D

Early Saturday evening (while we were having fun enjoying 姫路城), 市川さん and 桑原さん generously took the time to reserve a spot for us to sit by arriving at 5pm to stake out a place (with blankets to sit on, like for picnics!) for an event that started at 7pm. Lyさん was nice enough to go out the Friday before and buy a bigger blanket to accomodate all the people going to the event. Because it was a nice Saturday evening, we were joined by a lot of lab people such as 石さん, 篠田さん, 小西さん, 田中さん, and 伊達先生 and his wife (in addition to to the three mentioned above).

The fireworks display was super awesome and I had a blast! There were so many people there. It was so amazing. It's something that probably would be banned in the states just because of the major fire hazard it posed. However, that only made the whole situation more exciting!

Right before the fireworks show started, we went on a food and drink run. It was probably unwise, as most of the stands were sold out of edible goods considering it was so close to the start of the festival. It was me, Davidさん, 市川さん, 篠田さん (or was it 小西さん? my memory is failing me...), and 田中さん. We decided to be smart and go outside of this big field of emptiness in hopes of finding a close convenience store. Bad bad idea. To make a long story short, the nearest convenience store was probably still too far, all the handy vending machines in Japan were sold out of prime essentials (e.x. water & iced tea), and we ended up having split up in hopes of finding food and drink. As 市川さん, 篠田さん, and 田中さん were busy waiting in line for overpriced food far far from the field, me and Davidさん ran to the nearest vending machine that was not sold out for drinks. We got tiny, tiny bottles of water & milk tea for everyone and had difficulties carrying it (as we lacked a plastic bag and we were each carrying close to 6 bottles). When we went back to the field, the police had already started to block of area (mostly because it was getting too close to the start of the event, I think, than because of the major fire hazard concern I detailed above). After some smooth talking from 市川さん, we were able to sneak back just in time. I believe it just started as we spotted our picnic area.

They fired three ドラえもん (Doraemon) into the sky. I only caught an upside-down one and a slightly off centered one. I missed the first show, where ドラえもん was rightside up and looking perfect (darn!). Anyways, I was glad 市川さん told me about it, else I wouldn't have tried so hard to decipher the ドラえもん fireworks.

I have a few pictures of the fireworks, but I'm a bit bummed out because I lost some of my pictures due to the fact that my SD card for my camera decided to have a meltdown during the transfer of files to my computer. Unfortunately, a lot of good pictures were lost as well as precious pictures of 伊達先生 and his wife! I promised him I'd send those to him too. :( I also had good lab pictures that I lost (and had to resort to stealing from Youngさん. Ah, well... hope she will forgive.

Here's some shots of the 花火 from my camera. I had other ones where it looked like the sky was on fire... but those were lost due to technical difficulties (grr).

A mixture of people in 祭 (festival) type attire--浴衣 (yukatas) and the whole lot--littered in the crowds. Yukatas are so pretty!