Izumi Tamagawa Fireworks
Comments: 6
I love fireworks. We rode our bikes down to the Tama river tonight to see the Izumi-Tamagawa fireworks. Pyrotechnics is a serious business in Japan*. Tonight’s show was just a small local affair, but they still detonated 5,000 rockets (the show lasted for an hour including a couple of staging breaks).
In a few weeks the Tama will be the site of a massive display – two simultaneous shows, in fact. The river marks the border between Tokyo and Kanagawa prefecture, and a team from the Tokyo side squares off against a team on the Kanagawa side. The competition is truly fierce; words just don’t do it justice. We usually find a quieter spot upstream (closer to the action is absolutely packed) and have a barbecue with friends. It’s always an astounding show.
* The world’s largest shell is Japanese – the yon-shakudama. Yon means 4, and a shaku is an old measurement of roughly 12 inches, so (going metric) the yon-shakudama is about 1.2 metres in diameter. You can see a picture of one here. It explodes to a diameter of about 800 metres. I saw one launched at last year’s Tokyo/Kanagawa showdown and it was wicked.
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Posted to The Good • 2002.08.01 (Thu) • 00:03
Comments
Posted by robert 2002.07.12, 22:43
If only… (!) Wouldn’t this be a dream widget? At home, wireless, an iPad rather than a laptop would make my world. I already carry a laptop all over the house. I would love something in a better form factor.
Posted by Preben Arentoft 2002.07.13, 08:26
Looks like a hoax to me. BTW check out http://www.applele.com/
Posted by mb 2002.07.13, 08:31
I know nothing, just like the rest of the world, but I SO want a half-sized laptop. A big hand held. Something that I can actually use for downloading photos, typing stuff etc. I like to dream with the rest of the world…. And my years in government taught me that in the absence of good rumors, you might as well start your own to promote your own cause! A girl can dream, right?
Posted by Preben 2002.07.13, 09:16
Sorry for the 2 extra posts. The server returned an error.
Posted by jh 2002.07.13, 13:12
No - I’m sorry for the extra posts; it’s my fault.
If an internal server error occurs, what seems to happen is that the post goes through just fine. The server simply doesn’t confirm the action properly. You shouldn’t have to post anything again. I’ve amended the error page to explain this properly. Apologies for the poor usability design!
-jh
Posted by Mary Beth 2002.07.15, 01:47
yeah, I want it so bad I can almost imagine holding it. Not sure what functionality you can build into something that’s that small. How small is small enough - a sheet of paper size? smaller? Half my pismo is 10 X 6 inches. Should it have a port for external monitor too? All these questions for the design and tech guys to answer. Hurry! Hurry!
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