Fireworks & Taiko

This year's Lake Towada Kosui Matsuri (十和田湖湖水祭り) was awesome! The rain held off for the weekend so I was able to enjoy fireworks on Saturday night and taiko on Sunday.

The weather was pretty close to perfect on Saturday night, in fact. It was comfortably cool so I wasn't dying of heat in my yukata. There was also a bit of a breeze which was important for clearing the smoke from the fireworks. Admittedly it was cloudy, but since the fireworks didn't go up that high it wasn't a problem in terms of visibility at all. ^_^

I didn't take many photos since a) taking photos of fireworks is difficult; and b) I wanted to enjoy watching them more than I wanted to take pictures of them, but here are a couple of pics:

Also, here's a pic of me in my new yukata from Uniqlo. When I bought a new yukata last year I told myself that I wasn't going to buy any more yukata, but since it was on sale--only 3990yen for the yukata, obi, and himo (cloth "ropes" used to tie the yukata)--I couldn't help myself. ^^;;

(Incidentally, I just realized that I never posted a picture of the yukata that I bought last year, so here it is:)

Sunday I went down to the festival again, this time with the members of the Suijin Kaminari Taiko (水神雷太鼓) group to watch their two performances. It was the first time I've seen them perform since last year's Aki Matsuri.

Even though I know I'm a far way from being able to perform in public, watching them definitely gave me incentive to work harder at taiko practice. Usually I'm the type that hates being in the spotlight--even peripherally--but seeing their performance made me really want to be able to perform with them. It looked like so much fun!

At the pace I learn I suspect that it will probably be at least half a year if not more before I'll even be close to being deemed "ready to perform" but I definitely plan to work hard to reach that point.

*sigh* If I hadn't taken almost 3 whole months off from January to March (preparing for my Kirita students' graduation) I might even have been ready to perform this time 'round. Oh well. All I can do is continue to do my best from now on! 

Here's a video of the final song from their second performance of the day. (Sorry, the sound and video aren't exactly in sync...) The song is called "Hanamatsuri" and it's pretty much the only song out of everything they performed that day that I can play from beginning to end. ^_^;;