Firework Festival in Tokyo during Summer

This post will simply be mostly photos on two (maybe three if you count the one that I didn't wait to see the actual firework) firework festivals in Tokyo that I attended during my internship in Tokyo with the UTRIP program. There are festivals basically every weekend for the whole month of July and maybe couple more in August. I recommended everyone who has a chance to visit Tokyo during this time to attend one of the festivals. The enormous size of the events will surprise you even though they hold the events every weekend.

Sumidagawa Fireworks Festival 2014, near Tokyo Skytree

Tokyo Skytree: the location of Sumidagawa Fireworks Festival 2014 while people were heading back home

This first firework festival that I attended was Sumidagawa Firework Festival near Asakusa and Tokyo Skytree. The actual firework was supposed to start around 7.15pm (and it started right on time,) while we arrived at the venue around 6.45pm. We completely underestimated the number of people who will come to the event. We could not really find a good spot to look at the fireworks. First, we decided to sit under the highway and we could barely see the fireworks. Finally, we chose to walk for about an hour around the venue while looking at the fireworks since we thought this was the best solution that we could do at that time. It was not really a fun walk with a huge crowd of people. So, I got an idea for the second time that I would attend another festival a week later with my other group of friends.

Edogawa: location for the 39th Edogawa Fireworks Festival while the sun sets

Therefore for the second time, I went to the venue at least three hours before the actual time for the firework to make sure that we would have a good spot for the viewing. We got there around 4pm while the fireworks were at 7pm. And surely enough, there are people (lots of people) who were there earlier than us. But we still managed to get a good spot for viewing the firework. These two photos below are what I saw during the event.

One of the first firework sets at 39th Edogawa Fireworks Festival

Another set of firework at 39th Edogawa Fireworks Festival

The main difference between the two events are the location of the festival. The first one was right in the city. So, it was difficult for anyone to found a place to stay to look at the firework with the limited amount of space. Whereas for the second one, the fireworks took place about an hour by train away from the city center where there was a big grass field that everyone could stay and watch the firework (but it was still full, of course). However, the advantage of the first venue of being near the city is the amount of available subway lines around that area. People did not have to go to the same train station to get on the train at the same time which was the case for the second venue. People had to wait in line for hours to get on the train home after the fireworks simply because people simply could not fit anymore into the station. Actually, we ended up walking for a few kilometers since we did not want to wait another hour without going anywhere. But given all these troubles to attend the fireworks, I still recommend visitors who come to Tokyo during the summer to attend the event at least once to have some unique experience about Japan and Japanese culture.

PS. the Japanese word for the festival is 'Hanabi,' and it was dated back to 1732 when the fireworks was launched as a part of the festival of the dead.

Lastly, I had two YouTube video for the festival that I took during the event at both place here. The first one is at Sumida Park where you can see the metal fence where we walked around. And the second one is at Edogawa in the middle of the field.