Last weekend I traveled a few hours with a few of the ultimate folks from Futako to attend the Fuji-Yoshida Fire Festival. The draw of this festival, as is evident from the name, is Fire. Lots, and lots, of fire. On a narrow street. With the usual festival draws (Food! Beer! Goldfish!) on the sides of the street. And of course tons of people as well.
Jason, who provided the invitation (thanks!), was a local celebrity since he had served as a JET in Fujiyo for several years. As a result, we were treated by the very friendly locals to some good conversation and good food — including great local udon (at insanely low prices!) and homemade peanut butter cream sandwiches.
Unfortunately, since I don’t yet have an image stabilized digicam (or a DSLR) I didn’t get a ton of great photos, but there are a few that came out OK in the album. Here you can see one of the towers of bamboo being lit. As the night wore on the fires grew progressively lower (and more dangerous!) making for quite a fun time. There was also some great Taiko music and good local beer on hand.
Only drawback to the festival, besides getting home after midnight on a Sunday? Everything that went to the festival smelled like charcoal for a long time.
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