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There is always something that when we see it, our first thought is to share it with the people we love the most.
The aurora borealis dancing in the long night of the Arctic Circle, the rising sun after a night's bivouac on a mountaintop, the sky at sea level turned pink by the setting sun.
And the Nagaoka Fireworks Festival in Japan deserves to go on this list.
It's one of those gorgeous moving moments that will make you forget that life is short.
The summer of 2024 in Japan undoubtedly belongs to Niigata. Just after sending off Fuji Rock, we welcome the Hanabi Festival, and the triennial Earth Art Festival will continue until November. One can't help but marvel at how Niigata Prefecture has really taken art tourism to the extreme.
We signed up for a group tour and met at Echigo-Yuzawa station at 10am. It's only about an hour and a half on the Shinkansen from Tokyo Station.
Since it was the second day of the Hanabi Festival, the reserved seats were already sold out, so I bought a free seat. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get a seat, so I took two early trains and left at 8:40am, but the trains were very empty and I was able to sit comfortably all the way to my destination.
Echigo-Yuzawa Station is the starting point for almost all major events and a gathering place for ski resorts during the snowy season. The station is very large and has all kinds of facilities. You can store your bags, browse the souvenir stores, and sit in the station to eat hot bread and have a coffee. There is also a free lounge where you can lie down at the gondola station, which is a short walk away.
Early in the morning, the registration desk at the station for the one-day tour of the Earth Art Festival was full, so it seems that you need to make a reservation earlier in the season. Needless to say, the rental cars were also full.
We started by visiting a few nearby attractions during the day. Briefly sharing them with you.
This Kannon Hall displays more than 30 statues of Kannon and Buddha carved from a single ginkgo tree by a sculptor about 200 years ago. All the wooden statues were carved within a month, averaging one a day. It is said to have used only the free time in the evening.
Usually, Buddha statues are only for people to look at and worship, but the statues here have allowed locals to freely touch and even hold them up for photos since the old days. It is said that the statues were made following the original wishes of the sculptor so that they could grow up with the locals like toys.
(The tour we joined allowed touching and taking photos, but I don't think it's allowed when you apply for a visit on your own, so you need to be careful when you go there on your own.)
I actually have little interest in Buddha statues and Buddhism itself. The reason why I was so impressed with this place is that this skillful sculptor with a unique understanding of Buddha statues reminded me of my king in “Bird of Fire, Phoenix Chapter”.
After going back and checking it out, there shouldn't be much of a direct correlation since the times are so far apart. But everyone who's interested is highly recommended to read the manga, it's a grand and deep, singable story.
Koi no Sato（にしきごいのさと）
Niigata is Japan's “Koi town” and there are a lot of koi cultivation centers for ornamental koi.
I thought koi was something that only old Japanese people would like, but I enjoyed watching the crossbreeding diagrams of the various varieties of koi.
You can also actually see various varieties of koi in the pool. There are ones that are covered in gold and yellow, as well as ones that look like dandelions, which are beautiful. You can also buy fish food and feed them yourself. The biggest impression is that the koi are really big! Some of them are even more than a meter long. It was quite an eye-opening experience.
There is also a local textile called “Kochiya Shrinkage”. Since Niigata has a long history of having snowy winters and being unable to farm, the local people spend about half the year spinning and weaving at home, and this specialty was developed. It's really comfortable and cool to wear! But the price is high, a modern garment costs 40,000 to 50,000 yen, and it's not easy to take care of, so I didn't buy it at home.
Around 4 or 5 pm, we took a bus to the parking lot near the fireworks display and prepared to walk to the venue.
Both the Sumida River Fireworks Festival in Tokyo and the Nagaoka Fireworks Festival have this annoying point - it's hard to get around by car or bus due to the large number of people attending, and you need to walk for a long time to get to the river. This makes it less convenient both to get there and back.
It is recommended to prepare more physical strength and protection from the heat (cool wipes, water, parasol, fan or small fan) in advance to make this journey comfortable.
It was still hot as hell, but we were getting more and more excited as we were getting closer to the time of the Flower and Fire Festival.
While walking, I made some observations about the seating distribution.
I was surprised to see that all the seats at Nagaoka Hanabi are numbered (most of the seats in Tokyo are early arrivals, and the plastic sheets are laid out at random), and that the whole place is orderly and uncluttered.
Generally speaking, the seats are categorized into the staircase seats and the floor seats in the front court. The ladder seats have a great view. However, there is a long bridge on each side, so if you're in a seat outside the bridge, you'll have a big view blocked by the bridge. Be sure to take this into account if you make your own reservation.
The floor seats are actually group seats with a large area for plastic sheeting. It's spacious, but I think it would be partially blocked from view by the people seated in front of you, and you can't see the part underneath the fireworks.
We were seated even further forward this time, in the boat seat closest to the fireworks display. It was pretty far away from the crowd and across the bushes and very quiet. It was also the seat with the best view.
Seats like this are usually chartered by travel agents and sold by the group. The price may be expensive, but after experiencing it I really super recommend it, the whole thing is a VVIP treatment. They didn't give any advertising money for me to help publicize it, I just really hope that I can have such an experience when I come here in the future.
As soon as I got on board I started being constantly fed. All sorts of cold drinks and alcohol were taken and consumed at will.
As it was close to meal time, I was also fed a deluxe bento. It just so happens that this location also has a view of the sunset, so I was able to unlock the sunset view while eating and drinking before the fireworks display, and I felt a sense of happiness.
The Flower and Fire Festival is supposed to go by sunset time. It officially started just as it was getting dark.
There's a little detail about this time of year. On the right side of the photo below, you can faintly see a light on top of a building far away. You can see it clearly, it's the AEON Aeon mall logo, which is very clear after dark.
But three minutes before the Hanabi convention started, just as we were talking about this light, I didn't realize it suddenly turned off.
Since Japanese sign-type lights are always on at night, and this was definitely not the time to close the store, I guessed it would be for the Hanabi convention.
As many as a million people came to the event, it would be a great opportunity to publicize and attract traffic if it appeared in the photos, but the lights were turned off. It's very sad.
Let's talk about the aftermath of the Nagaoka Fireworks Festival itself.
The event we watched consisted of 39 “programs”, each lasting anywhere from 1 to 6 minutes, and each sponsored by a company or organization.
At the beginning of each program, the name of the program, the sponsoring company, and the jingle are read out. A few of the programs were heavy hitters (the ones circled in red in the picture below), and the exact start time was also stated in the program.
In addition to being larger in scale, longer in duration, and more lavish in effect, the main event is often accompanied by music, which is both visually and aurally rewarding and makes it very easy to be moved.
The most famous is the classic program “Phoenix” which is held every year. My personal favorite is the 32nd show “Hope to the Future”.
Many of Nagaoka Hanabi's ordinary small shows are of a grand finale caliber when placed in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The main event is a program that is not at all stingy with multiple huge numbers of Hanabi at the same time. It makes you feel like the money is burning through 10 million to 10 million dollars.
After seeing it, I can't help but wonder where this is one of Japan's top three hanabi, it's so humbling, it's just crushingly number one. Totally worth grabbing tickets in advance, taking the Shinkansen, and staying overnight to see!
The Sparklers will officially end with all the programs at about 21:10. Afterwards there will be some single fireworks, mainly exploratory experiments done by professional pyrotechnicians, so it's time to get up and walk around.
After the end of the show, the concentration of people leaving the venue will lead to unusual traffic congestion. Driving in a car or taking a taxi is not really recommended. The best thing I heard so far was that one of my friends walked back to the station and took the pre-booked Shinkansen back to Tokyo, arriving in Ikebukuro by about 12:00 pm. And that's when our bus was still stuck in traffic.
If you're planning to stay in the neighborhood for a night, make sure to make your hotel reservation early, as hotels within an hour's drive will be full rooms. If you're lucky enough to stay overnight, it 's nice to check out the art and architecture around Tokamachi the next day.
The last thing I wanted to do was to have a seaweed soba. I bought a bunch of soba noodles and went back to Tokyo.
- Author:japan guides
- URL:https://japan-guides.com/article/culture-86
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