Hotaru Festival

As a wise woman once put it, "We have lots of fireflies at home, but here in Japan it's just different." Too true. Something about being down by the little river snuggled between the rice fields, surrounded by dozens of other folks just out at night to see the fireflies, makes all the difference.

Last Saturday I went to a firefly festival preceded by dinner which was all kinds of good. Good food, good company, good English spoken by many, Good Times.

Making prints at the festival's Main Tent. I might add that it was the only tent.
First you roll the ink on, a la linoleum prints in Mrs. Tachok's class.

Then you gently rub it with the straw rubbing thing.

Step 3 is applying yellow dots to the butts of the fireflies and coloring in the moon. Also, some scenes, like the one I'm working on here, allow for some extra additions (that's redundant, isn't it?).
To my left is El Peruano, from GS.

The proud artist with her finished masterpiece. Of course, I felt I got the shaft, and OTHER people got to make a cooler one, so I did too. Hence the blue ink you see in earlier picture.

After firefly watching we headed back for some sparkler fun.
And fun we had.

Little guy sees what two sparklers can do together. Of course, his lack of awareness nearly caused great catastrophes as he pointed them in all the wrong directions...

Dad hooks up the big-boy sparkler.

Yuuta sports protective footwear many times his size after suffering the wrath of oblivious double sparklers.

Playing with senkohanabi, a super cool little sparkler whose justice is not done by this photo... but thanks anyway, oh Great Photographer!