The Calm Before the Boom

You know how it feels, standing there, waiting for the show to begin.     I didn't have to elbow my way through the crowds because here in Japan the people do things in a very orderly fashion.    All I had to do was follow the guy in front of me through a cordoned off pathway leading to my destination.

 I shot this at an iso of 6400 for shits and giggles.    Plus, it's an excuse for not toting my tripod around.     The screamer was nice to have, too.   Especially on busy nights  like that night where there was no parking.    Buzzing around traffic as if there were no traffic rules nor lights was nice, yet dangerously fun.

The first bang went off and the greatest fireworks show in Yokohama started.  I've been a permanent fixture around this part of Yokohama, sort of.   I mean, I have seen every fireworks show every single year for the past 8 years.   2012 turned out to be the best on record for having the most fireworks and the largest turnout in this events history.  

I was greatly impressed by the level of services that were available....i.e. plenty of beer taps and ice cream  dispensers.    Lots of drinking and lots of salarymen as usual lining the parks and boozing away.   Yokohama City is unlike other prefectures in Japan.   It is Japan, but not.   Yokohama people give off a different vibe that's strangely homely, yet ordinary while still maintaining  some semblance of their prefectural identity.  

The fireworks were loosed into the nigh sky.   They dazzled us with their vivid array of colors and ariel manoeuvrings.    This spectacle of light, truly wonderful, ushered in the beginning of summer's splendour.    We love the heat and the humidity, although we complain about it.   We love the bottomless beer mugs topped with copious amounts of creamy foam, although we wake up with a hangover the next day.     We, the people who live in Yokohama, love it all, but never cease from complaining about the things we truly love about the hottest time of year.

YPD( Yokohama Police Department ) are the nicest bunch on record for me.   Not only can you get drunk and drive, but you can tell  the cops to fuck off  for pulling you over for it, and be let go!    This guy  sped off  after doing just that for almost fifteen minutes.

The security staff were all over 65 years old, so they were more like monitors than security guards.  Everything was nice though, and so was the eye candy and the hundreds of yukata.    Eye candy for me means Japanese mothers, for others it's perhaps the young ones like these in the picture below.  This composed look was sort of the mood as the crowd was extremely tame for such an event.  That's what I mean by Yokohama being different from other prefectures.

I can't say much for a baseball game because I've never been to one here in Japan, but for sure, prefectural love for events have very little meaning.    Sure, people get with their friends and drink, and enjoy themselves, but it's just not there yet, unlike other prefectures.    I had a blast.   I really enjoyed myself.