Event

For Brits like myself, fireworks displays conjure up memories of cold winter nights, huddling round bonfires and oohing and ahhing as both your breath and extremities freeze. While this is possible in Japan, here fireworks festivals, or hanabi matsuri, are very much a summertime thing. Fireworks Festivals in Nagoya Hanabi matsuri is a very important season for Japanese. Fireworks themselves were brought to Japan by the trading Portuguese in the late 16th century, but since that time they have become as instrumental to enjoying the summer as cherry blossoms do the preceding spring. The hanabi season is a time when families can get together and eat drink and be merry. It is a time for gorging on festival food and for the blossoming romance of high school couples sitting under the sky with the lights mirroring the sparks of love in their eyes. It is also a time for the wearing of ‘yukata’, a casual and light summer kimono that is often decorated with bright firework pattern designs and are (at least traditionally) dyed with indigo as a natural mosquito repellant. Throughout July and August there won’t be a weekend go past without a fireworks festival going on somewhere in Aichi. For a full…