Summer is Here

The endless drone of cicadas. The swealtering heat. Yukata. The dull thumps of fireworks. The Japanese summer has arrived at last.

The rainy season is over, finally, and now the heat is rising steadily and the true summer months of August and September unveil themselves.



Despite the hordes of sweating salarymen in their suits, I am looking forward to an actual summer. The endless rain of July got me down a bit, and kept us all indoors far more than I would have liked. The lack of many major blog post recently has reflected that! It is hard to do many cool things when it pours rain all weekend.



Well, thats over, and now its time for parties on the beach and glorious fireworks displays. The first of those was held last saturday, to celebrate the start of summer. Well over an hour solid of amazing fireworks. I of course took along my trusty Nikon and took over 200 photos of the display. I learned a lot about framing fireworks and the timing required to get a good shot. I also learned that my tripod is kind of unstable and that I really need a wire release for my camera. I got a lot of shake, so the pictures look fine to great when they are small, but whatever you do don't enlarge them!