Fire Flowers & Shabu-shabu

On Saturday evening (2015.08.01), there was a fireworks show along the Sakawa River  酒匂川 in Kamonomiya. It gets dark here pretty early, but it stays hot and humid. Anyway, I met up with a co-worker (Keef in Japan) and some ex-students of the school and headed to the river. We were lucky that we got a pretty good spot and, being tall, I was able to see over the top of everyone there. Unfortunately, all the food stalls were on the other side of the river...

So, fireworks. 

In Japanese, they are called "hanabi" 花火 which roughly translates to "fire-flower". First things first... fireworks are much more impressive here than the ones I'm used to in England. The show lasted for ages, and the arrangements were really impressive. My favourite was the one that made a vase of sunflowers.

Nearing the end, a string of fireworks was set off along the bridge to create a waterfall that changed from red, to green, to yellow, to white. It was really rather beautiful.

I'm really pleased that I got to see the fireworks. I wasn't able to go to the festival the previous weekend, so I'd have been gutted if I'd missed this as well.

Now onto shabu-shabu. I met up with Keith and his girlfriend after he'd finished work on Sunday and got a taxi to the restaurant. We went to a family restaurant as it's cheaper, and we got to blow a small girl's mind - she was super curious about us and really cute, so we didn't mind.

I'd never had shabu-shabu before, but it's really good so I'll definitely do it again. Basically, you choose the stocks you want, order the meat and then get a load of salad etc. that you want as well. Heat up the stock at your table and cook what you want for however long you want, then dunk it in a sauce of your choice.

It was a really nice and relaxed night out, and I got to see a bit of Kamonomiya that I hadn't been to before. All round good meal. Would recommend.