Daisen City's Fireworks Competition

Hello everyone! Or should I say こんにちは, now that I (finally) made it to Japan... I had to go through Korea to get here. It wasn't a pleasant experience for me... I had an 8 hour flight (the time flew by on the plane), an 18 hour layover (I do not like Incheon Airport), then a 2 hour ride to Akita (seemed like 15 minutes). But I made it, and I'm loving Japan so much.

My first real event in Japan was the Daisen City annual fireworks competition. It's a prestigious competition that fireworks masters prepare the whole year for. It's when they get to show off their newest creations. It was really amazing. This year, there was estimated at over a million people attending the festival.
If you follow Japanese fireworks competitions, (which I doubt many of you do) you'd know that I'm actually posting late because the competition was on August 25. Sorry!

I'm friends with a girl from Tokyo, who actually has family that live in Daisen City. They were nice enough to pick us up from the train station and actually save spots for us (AND buy us yakisoba!). I felt so grateful. The show itself didn't start until around 6, but people were there since before 11 to claim the good seats.

When I was first planning to go to Akita, I was told that it was going to be in the rural country. When I think that, I don't picture cities at all... so I was actually really surprised when I arrived at Daisen City and actually saw a city, with tall building, etc.

This is my first festival, but from what I've seen they're all generally the same. There was great food selection, though it did get repetitive. I just loved the entire setup.

There were also games to play. Of course I played and lost...

The fireworks were gorgeous against the setting sun.

I had to contain myself and resist posting up all of my fireworks pictures! If you would like to see more, though, I'm planning to upload the raws to my flickr account. I'll get on that eventually, (when I run out of space on my memory card).

Overall, it was a good day and I'm glad I got to spend it with friends. It was a great start to my stay in Japan, and so far, Japan has not disappointed. 

And to end, I uploaded a video of the fireworks finale. (Though they called it the "finale," I don't think they understood what that meant, exactly, because they continued to shoot of fireworks for the twenty minutes we walked back to the train station...)
Enjoy!