kumano fireworks (熊野の花火)

japan really knows how to put on a good fireworks show. new years in las vegas and independence day in boston dont have anything on kumano and its fireworks festival. my friends and i sat on the beach and ooh'ed and ahh'ed  for 2+ solid hours of beautiful fireworks set off from several boats out on the water. i heard that there were more than 20,000 fireworks and close to 1,00,000 people this year all crowded on a little beach in kumano this year.

one of the coolest things i saw was a boat that dropped fireworks into the water behind it as it went from one side of the beach to the other. as you can hear someone say in the video, it did actually seem a bit mario-kart-esque the way it was dropping them and racing away:

at one point near the end of the show a boat set off this gigantic bomb / firework that was so close to where we were sitting that i felt the earth shake and felt the exploding sound waves in my chest. unfortunately, i was about 2 seconds too late with this video. its still pretty spectacular though:
with such a long show, i guess it sort of made sense that they had multiple finales. here was one of the better ones. skip to about a minute into it for the super exciting stuff:
and here's a slideshow just in case the movies are too long/boring: