Came back to Aomori. On their last day, they flip the script and do it in the daytime as opposed to the evening. That leaves the eveining free for fireworks while some of the Nebuta are floated around the bay. Paid seats line the shore which had the best unobrtructed close view. I overindulged in the street food before realizing this would be my last chance for nokkedon. In 2011, I ran into this market, primarily selling seafood, and observed people walking around with bowls of rice and getting select items from the vendors. The items were exchanged for x amount of tickets. The line to get in was unfortunately long and they only had the 1 sheet of 10 tickets. They used to sell a smaller sheet. You get a bowl of rice, an extra ticket if you want a large serving.Typically everyone likes to customize their kaisendon. I went down a different aisle. I got 2 cooked shrimp, fried fishcake, a piece of grilled whitefish, and a slice of wagyu . The wagyu was so much better than the meal from the other day. Wolfed it down so I could get some pics of the parade during the day. By the time I got to where it all happens, I was pretty muc too late and it was over.
4 hours before the fireworks show and I was prepared. There was a stepped cirular area where there was a patchwork of tarps and coverings of areas that had been reserved. I looked for the highest point with the most unobstructed view and put down my towel on a small sliver of ground to let people now this spot was no longer open. With that, I went to get some drinks, yakisoba, ebi katsu, and a sausage. Not sure why the sausage. I had not taken in a good show in quite a while. I always skip the shows back home because of the congestion afterwards. Everything seems different when you are on vacation. There were maybe 4 spots around the wharf where they were being fired from. The largest, biggest, and loudest were always coming from the right. Beautiful displays of colors and streamers and the concussive force of the larger explosives. Smaller shots helped filled the sky closer to the water. Although enjoyable, my pet peeve was the pauses in between times when they shot them off. I am used to one pretty continuous display with a few small pauses to change the mood or song the fireworks were choreographed to. There was no music so it would just stop then a few minutes later, start up again. At least we knew when the end was happening because they saved the best for last. A massive firework that filled the visible sky. It was really impressive. We were really too far from the shore and blocked by trees to make out any of the floating floats.
