We went for “the 75th Black Ship Festival” held in Shimoda City, Shizuoka Pref0 on day 16 of May, 2014.

We visited Shimoda (the tip of Izu Peninsula) on Friday evening to see fireworks display and spend a night there.

Festival Fireworks Display at sea

We left our home town Odawara on Friday evening of , May 16, 2014 to the venue for the festival, Shimoda port.

We checked in at a hotel right before Shimoda and hurried to Shimoda Port.

Hotel staff adviced us to leave as quick as we can or we couldn’t find a space for parking in free parking lot, if you want to park there you have to be there earlier than one hour before the opening. We only changed clothes, grabbed minimum baggage such as camera or video for coverage and left our hotel immediately.

As hotel staff expected the temporary parking lots were already full (Madogahama Beach Sea Park, the fish market ),

However, and a guard told us if we go 2 blocks away we would find a parking lot with vacancies and we followed his advice. We proceeded along the river of Inouzawa River toward the river mouth and succeeded to found a vacant at a free parking lot.

According to a leaflet a parking lot provided by festival office is located near Takegahama beach.

Come to think of it a plane place like river bank would be the best view spot, nothing blocks your sight and grass field feels nice to stay.

On a day of May during daytime a tee-shirts wuold be enough to spend a time but at sea coast wind blows quite hard and temperature drops at night time we felt chilly. We shouldn’t have been off guard…

We opened our portable sleeping bag which we brought in case to protect us from the cold. We could have pretty comfortable time here this time. But we realized that countermeasures are very important and decided to bring bring chair, winter clothing, raincoat next time next year.

Even though we arrived at Shimoda Port more than one hour earlier than the scheduled time it took more than we expected to find a parking lot and a parking space. 30 minutes before the firework display start we finally settled dowm.

Well, we waited for 30 more minutes in a chiliness, finally, as scheduled the fireworks began.

Spurrrt…”BAM” Colorful big flowers of fire shown in the night sky. Several of them were launched at a stretch

When you feel fireworks close to you, you feel your heart races and just can’t help feeling excited.

Since there were nothing blocking and no disturbance by light of town, we enjoyed gorgeous fireworks very much and we could say we seated on a special seat. We felt content. This is what I call “bliss”.

Here’s what we shot. Hope you all enjoy.

When fireworks were over, moon softly came out of hill on the opposite side of bank and created very fantastic scenery, the quietness after the dynamic fireworks made our memory of the day more impressive.

This is the end of our report.

Our next report will be the big parade, next big programme on the commemorative ceremony of the Black Ship Festival at Shimoda Park.

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