August 6th

It's the height of summer in Tokyo. The temparature is over 35C every day. I don't use AC usually, but I turn it on this week a lot. As a summer feature, Firework festivals are held. In Tokyo the Sumida River Firework festival is the biggest. Nice seats at restaurants along the riverfront are reserved a year in advance. I went to Atsugi Firework Festival in Kanagawa pref today. My American friend, New Zealand friend said Japanese firework is best in the world. This site introduces many kinds of Japanese firework by video. The top part shows basic types, for example this is KIKUSAKI (daisy top), This is BENIHACHI (Red bee), This is GINKAN (Silver Crown), and this is flat mark type, heart, happy smile, planet. Starmine fired in rapid succession are so great, you may feel a kind of ecstasy.

Another height of summer will be All-Japan Senior High School Baseball Championship Tournament, everybody cheer for his own native prefecture. It is held in Koshien in Hyogo Pref. Matsui (young!)and Ichiro (cute!), such big baseball players played and got scout's eye in early high school days. Matsui got walked 5 times in a row and his high school lost. At 8:15 August 6th, around first game started. The wail of a siren stops the game every year. I can hear sirens in my area too. Then people offer a minute of silence for Hiroshima. It continues for 60 years after the day. As the only nation in the world to be bombed with atomic weapons, Japan has to bring down horribleness of the atomic weapons.

Comments

[reza irany]

hi we are freemason in iran

[ramil]

hi!

watched the fireworks in seiseki-sakuragaoka, pics here :seiseki fireworks

[Mari]

Hi there
What I want to know is the truth of war. I am thinking to write another post in Nagasaki day.

[Joe]

koshien does exist? hhmm... I've been watching H2~Kimi to itahibi for quite some time now and thought it's just a fictional tournament.. =)
Have you ever been there Mari?

[クレア (Claire)]

Tonight, the Chicago White Sox defeated the Seattle Mariners 4-2, then there was a nice hanabi taikai after the game.

It was "Japanese American Day" at the baseball stadium. 日本人みたい人たくさんその野球試合へ行きました。もシカゴの日米協会へ行きました。

This baseball stadium is not far from where Enrico Fermi unlocked some of the secrets of nuclear reactions, the University of Chicago.

We must never forget the atrocities of war, no matter who committed them, and work to prevent them from happening again. There should never be another Hiroshima, there should never be another Holocaust, although I suspect the current regime picks and chooses its wars based on what treasures it can gain, rather than what is happening there. Why is so little progress being made about North Korea, and nothing done about Darfur? Seems to me there is no profit motive in those places and there is money to be had in Iran...