Fire & Sea Festival

Hundreds of years ago our Island was occupied by Japanese pirates. There is even a Pirate castle still standing that we hope to visit soon. Apparently our Island is also known for its beautiful women because most of the people living in Innoshima our still descendents from that time period. The pirates would kidnap beautiful women from all over the country to make them there wives. Every year in Innoshima they have a three part Pirate Festival the first part was before we arrived but the second and third parts were Saturday night and Sunday Afternoon. Saturday night was the Fire Festival. There were free buses leaving from all over the Island. Matt, our manager worked Cam’s last two classes so we could go. We hopped a very crowded bus right outside our apartment and headed to the beach. There were tons of people dressed in traditional clothes (kimonos and such).

We arrived just in time to see the “bringing of the fire.” Men dressed in Pirate garb stormed the beach carrying torches, and it was all done to the beat of traditional drums.

Next was the lighting of the torch pretty self explanatory.

We got a really good spot sitting on the beach because the next part of the festival was the fireworks. Cam and I both agree that they were the best fireworks we’ve ever seen. They were about 45 min long and someone told us afterwards there were about 3000 fireworks. There was even heart shaped and flower shaped ones, (very cool).

WARNING WARNING:
The next video is a little long. It's a full 6 minutes of just fireworks. We decided to put it in, even though everyone has seen fireworks before because there were some really different ones we hadn't seen before. So, feel free to skip it if your only into LIVE fireworks. I guess we won't feel TOO hurt *sniff sniff tear tear*

Narumi, our boss came to pick us up so we didn’t have to brave the bus again which was really nice. We ended the night watching some really cool traditional dancing with a modern twist, right on the beach.

They were really good and it was really exciting to watch.

Sunday morning we borrowed a couple of scooters and drove back to the beach.

Yes I was very brave and drove the 45 minutes on the wrong side of the road. This turned out to be not as hard as it sounds since there are only three turns to get there. Also we kinda hugged the side so I could go slowly and people could pass us. Which lots of scooters do so no one was even mad at me. Except Cam!!! Hee Hee. We got to the beach where the Sea Festival was taking place AKA Dragon boat races.

It was awesome. We even had a team to cheer for because one of those business men I told you about earlier is on the company team. So we cheered but they didn’t win. Which was okay because I guess the same team wins every year. The winning team is the islands Dragon boat team they compete all over Japan. Where as the other teams are just competing for fun, they are local businesses, the high school, different companies, that sort of thing. In fact it is an honor to be able to race with the Innoshima Dragon Boat team. It’s like if there was an open entry hockey tournament for Canada Day and you got to play with against the Oilers. It was a great day the weather was perfect, there was a nice breeze off the water so we weren’t completely sweltering and the scooter ride home was great too. We can’t wait till there’s another festival.