Teganuma Hanabi Taikai

Hey Nick,

I noticed that you finally evolved your Hino Kagutsuchi in Puzzle & Dragons

¹That's one Puzzle, multiple Dragons. Also available for Android devices.

¹. Wayne and I were wondering if you just didn't know about Ultimate Evolutions or had just not yet collected all of the pieces.

Anyway, just wanted to say that P&D is old-hat. All the cool kids are now playing Wind Runner. It's a Line-Appli game. It's fun, kinda. Or not. I don't know.

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The first thing you have to know about Kita-Kashiwa

²北柏.

² is that it is where I live. The second thing is that, apart from M&J Billiards and Darts above the 7-11, there's not that much going on in Kita-Kashiwa. For a brief while, Kita-Kashiwa was the talk of the town as rumors incessantly hummed about the Costco that was going to be built down by the Monsoon Love Hotel. The fact that Costco was seriously contemplating opening their 10th Kanto area store in a gigantic empty lot down the street from my apartment was a constant drone, like the sound of the summer cicadas. Where were they going to build the parking lot? Were they going to widen the streets or expand the station? Maybe even make it a stop along the Rapid Line? A sure mark that Kita-Kashiwa had "made it" as a major economic factor in North-Chiba.

But like most businesses, they took a look around and decided that there just wasn't enough people in the Teganuma area to warrant an investment and chose Tsukuba: that boom-town of a city. Instead, in that empty lot they built a gigantic logistics facility that I have yet seen a truck drive in or out of since the last cement truck pulled away and the tape came down six months ago. But it is a very nice building. And very well lit.

Despite the fact that there are only a handful of eateries and the nearest supermarket is a 10 minute bike ride uphill across the river, Kita-Kashiwa is a nice place to live. It's quaint. It's train-convenient. It's often quiet

³except when the ヤンキース ride through on their modded-out bikes.

³. And it's my home.

But it's also the home of the area's largest annual fireworks festival, the 手賀沼花火大会.

You'll have to forgive me for not knowing much about the hanabi-taikai, except that it is a hundreds-year-old-tradition that happens every year in thousands of places across Japan on the first Saturday of August.

And while I didn't get to go last year because it was cancelled due to the general instability of the Japanese economy, or the year before because of the Tohoku Disaster, I had no intention to go to go out of my way to see any 花火大会 this year, even though this could very well have been my only chance.

Either way, whatever my reasons were--because they're probably stupid anyway--I was not really planning on going. Maybe I'd take in a movie, or read a book, or go out on a date instead: you know, any number of statistical improbabilities. I was just going to watch TV and eat popcorn.

But I digress. Where was I? Oh yes.

I was not planning on going to watch fireworks. Years of Disney-branded Fireworks Extravaganzas have jaded me to the possibilities of any interest in civic-sponsored firework events.

So when a coworker in the Foreign Language Department asked me if I was planning on walking the 100 meters down the road to Furusato Koen (the chic place to catch some summer sizzle), I told her, "No, I wasn't planning on it."

She must have thought that I was expressing concern for the bustle of the event, since it being a community staple, it was unthinkable that anyone would choose to not to want to go.

"Oh, I see," she said. "If Kita-Kashiwa is too crowded," she continued, "you should go see Kashiwa-no-Ha's fireworks display."

"Oh," I nodded politely in response.

"But their show is a little small this year."

"Oh," I said.

"Yeah. This year it's only 45-minutes."

"Oh," I said.

This year's Teganuma Hanabi Taikai clocked in at a little over 90 minutes long, a few million mosquitoes deep, and one really creepy looking amphibious cricket-beetle thing that tried to make babies with my forearm.

I will pass no critical judgement over the fireworks show itself save for two points: 1) a 90-minute fireworks show is just what you'd think it would be, just imagine six fifteen-minute fireworks shows playing consecutively; and, 2) they actually set off fireworks on the lake's surface. That, itself, would only have been surpassed in coolness if they skipped fireworks across the lake. Which is to say, that that is still pretty cool.

Fun fact: up until 2011, Teganuma was Japan's dirtiest lake. Now it is only number 2 on the list.

Bonus flair: this summer's hot J-dance track is last summer's J-sleeper. 安室奈美恵's ONLY YOU!