Firework Frenzy

Fuwa fuwa... Today was awesome! I started out by going to Akihabara and picking up a CD that I've had my eye on. I also grabbed souveniers for various anime-fan friends of mine (they are super cool and no, I'm not saying what they are), and I got the main thing that I went to get - the Comiket catalog! More on that in the next post.

After that, I grabbed lunch and hopped on a train to Ichikawa to wait for the Edogawa hanabi taikai (fireworks event). Hiro, who lives in Tokyo, invited all the MIT interns to come and watch, so I decided to go, since I'd been rather disappointed by the Sumidagawa hanabi taikai. I got there around 3, and there was only one other person waiting... Hiro showed up about half an hour after that. He'd set up the tarp on Wednesday, and we were in a perfect spot - directly across the river from the launch site. Actually, it was a bit of a problem because the wind was blowing towards us, which meant that later on, during the fireworks, we were constantly having debris rain on us. Still... Talk about freaking awesome! I don't think I've been so close to fireworks before. Not even in Boston, where we usually get the best seats in the house, right across from the launch barge. I mean, when the stuff is actually falling on you... Anyway. It was fantastic. Pictures can be found here!

Some of the more interesting fireworks included hearts, butterflies, and kitty faces! There were also the standard smiley-faces, but those are just so... common. Plenty of flower-inspired fireworks too. There were also various 'themes' for the various major parts. One was 'rainbows' with seven-colored fireworks, and another one was 'red rain' with plenty of red and gold fireworks (I heard something about imitating the autumn sky over the loudspeaker). Sam took lots of video, so I'm going to have to download that. Fun fun.

Also got to speak some Japanese to various friends of Hiro, which was nice. I got complements about my kanpeki (perfect) Japanese. ^^;

We chilled at Hiro's house for a bit after the show, and people displayed photos on Hiro's laptop. I gotta get my hands on some of those, because most of mine came out wobbly.

In the end, I dragged myself back to Kokubunji and jumped into the shower so I could wash off all the ashes. Thank goodness! I'd been feeling like I'd never be clean again.

Then I settled down to check out my Comiket catalog and I got so excited that I had to start blogging about it. In fact, I'm going to give it its own entry. Check it out, yo.

There was a small earthquake right after I started typing this... just to round out the evening, I guess.

- Flykyr Skysong

Current song: KOTOKO - 4 2 1 -a will- (from her second album, which I bought today... it totally rocks!)
Current mood: Utterly exhilerated