The Sumidagawa Fireworks Festival

You don't know fireworks until you've spent a Summer in Tokyo. Festival upon festival mesh into a single ongoing event, and the moment the rainy season is over, every weekend day sees the skies become the canvas of a thousand colorful explosions, from every end of the city and sometimes in two, even three places simultaneously, for anywhere between 60 to 90 minutes at a time.
 When the Japanese do fireworks, they mean business.

 And never more so than when it comes to the Sumidagawa fireworks.
 Streets close and drove upon drove of onlookers fill every inch of ground they can find until there is literally nowhere to sit anywhere remotely close to the side of the Sumida river. Police patrol the streets so that no one can trespass onto people's apartment roofs (which I sure as hell tried.) So I settled beside an old couple on the hard concrete ground and waited, and then they lit the sky on fire.

Pikachu!

 The Sumidagawa Firework Festival is a tradition 300 years old, pitting rival pyrotechnic groups against one another to see who can create the most impressive series of explosions. The results can be breath-taking - as often times, firework shows have a beginning, a rising point, and a climax, the Sumidagawa fireworks cycle through those stages within the span of three minutes, over 30 different times in over 30 different styles and themes, with some included shapes as complicated as famous cartoon characters' heads. You can imagine my surprise when Pikachu exploded into the sky.

 The sensation of sitting elbow to elbow with millions of people and feeling the rhythmic drum of the fireworks vibrate in your chest is an experience you can only really get in Japan, and the feeling is unforgettable.