Sumida River Fireworks Festival sucks! Yes, the most famous summer fireworks festival in Japan, officially known as Sumidagawa Hanabi Taikai, is crap. There are three key reasons why:
(1) You have to camp out for weeks in the hope of seeing anything. All the best places fill up as the event gets closer. You won’t find anywhere comfortable to stand, let alone sit, no matter how early you show up on the day. My memory of the festival was of standing behind a wire fence on a small patch of grass slightly smaller than the area covered by the soles of my feet.
(2) The ‘boom factor’ is a lie. The fireworks go off in two different places, meaning the number is effectively halved. That makes the number you can actually see around the same as less well-attended displays. There are, however, a few choice spots where you can see both locations. For that, you’ll need to camp out for weeks.
(3) Crowds. Once the display is over, everyone heads to Asakusa Station. That’s 948,000 people all heading in the same direction. Eating is also a big part of festivals, so the usually scenic Asakusa streets are lined with trash.
Thankfully, there are better firework displays, like Itabashi Hanabi Taikai (いたばし花火大会). My friends arrived in the early afternoon and spread out their blue sheet. We drank and ate red velvet cake while dragonflies danced around us until it got dark.
Another great festival is The 43rd Katsushika Nouryou Hanabi Taikai (第43回葛飾納涼花火大会). All day and into the evening, giant red dragonflies float above the grass, making it look like a section of one of those digital art posters you had in college where all the dolphins are flying into space on rainbows.
What you need:
A blue plastic sheet. Hell yeah it has to be blue! Don’t look at me, I don’t make the rules. This is used not so much as a place to sit, but more of a way to mark your territory.
Plastic bags. To put your rubbish in. You’ll need more than one.
Beer. Don’t buy it from the convenience store near the display since they’ll be full of people doing the exact same thing. If it has to be ice-cold, you can buy it from a vendor (limited selection), but you’ll still want more than one over the course of the display. Buy those in advance.
Wet wipes. Eating buttered jacket potatoes with chopsticks is tough. Most festival food is fairly greasy too.
No food. Never bring food. There are plenty of food stalls selling food and even standard fare like corn-on-the-cob and jacket potatoes have a Japanese twist to them. You’ll have to queue for these too, but it’s worth it.
There are a number of summer firework festivals and almost all of these are better than Sumidagawa. For a fairly comprehensive free listing, pick up Lawson’s Ticket magazine from Lawson’s convenience store. However, even if you aren’t in Tokyo (or, perhaps, especially if you’re not in Tokyo), there should be plenty of local firework displays around you. Have fun!
Ho, that reminds me of last Saturday when I could enjoy a surprise firework display from my balcony. No waiting, no crowd…
Had the fireworks not been so pathetic, it would have been great. I’m sure it was far worse than the Sumida River Fireworks Festival!
If you had a place you could stand, access to food and trash bins, and your apartment is free of drunk salarymen, it’s already better than Sumida River!
My favourite fireworks display is the Edogawa fireworks, which is the first weekend of August (the 7th this year). There’s one firing location, and there are giant fields along the whole river so pretty much everyone gets a spot. There’s also two different train lines you could take, three different statons, if you’re willing to walk a little longer for quieter stations.
That sounds similar to Itabashi Hanabi Taikai, although that takes place along the Arakawa. I think that giant fields are definitely the way to go. It’s better to watch in comfort than have a bigger ‘boom factor’.
The actual display at Sumida is also usually inferior to others too (if you even find a place to watch it from). Most displays are very well planned and organised overall in the artistic sense; Sumida isn’t.
Because it’s the “top” event, it’s where all the firework companies debut their new creations. Net result: half the display is an incredibly dull series of individual launches of “new shade of green” “makes a slightly different pattern” fireworks. Sure, the new fireworks may be great, but only when they’re being launched as part of a co-ordinated show which, frankly, Sumida isn’t.
I’ve seen some great individual fireworks at shows. I believe it was Itabashi where I saw fireworks in the shape of dragonflies, apples and Pikachu… I don’t want to see another shade of green.
It’s ironic that all the buzz about Sumida being the top fireworks show in Japan stops it from being so.
You know what, I was going to write exactly the same thing: though I’ve never been to this display, the amount of people that have told me about the fact that only half the show is worth seeing has put me off time and time again. I am most certainly not going to bother!
Back when I used to work for a certain eikaiwa which had a special conversation room, I would ask the people attending whether they had done things like go to Sumidagawa fireworks display. Invariably, they would reply that they hadn’t and I always wondered why. I mean, how bad could the crowds be?
[...] up next, a warning of a big FAIL on the Hanabi in Sumida from our good friends at Spam From Japan.He’s also generous enough to recommend some Hanabi [...]