Hanabi (fireworks)

In Japan fireworks are legal. You can buy them everywhere. At the moment it`s summer so it`s time to celebrate after enduring a cold long winter. My new apartment is really close to a park so every night for the last few weeks i`ve been able to hear people letting of fireworks. So on Saturday aftenoon Mika and i went and bought a big bag of fireworks and beer to have our own celebration.

this bag cost us about $80

this is what was in the bag. If you click on the picture and look at the large size you can see the ones in the bottom right corner that look like they have wings. These were my favourites. you light them on the ground and they spin like crazy and take off straight up into the air about 30m and then explode into the usual crackling star things.

some of them went for over a minute and others went about 40m in the air and landed about 50 - 60m away. I was just expecting big sparklers like we put on a birthday cake. The photo below i was a bit nervous about lighting it in my hand after seeing some of the others. You light it in your hand and it starts out like a sparkler then you throw it on the ground and it goes crazy spinning and exploding everywhere.

This one was our finale!! It lasted for about a minute and was bright like this the whole time. It`s been raining since Sunday so we havent been able to go back and finish of the bag. Hopefully next weekends weather will be ok.