Otaru Ushio-Matsuri Festival 2015

The last Sunday of July sees the fireworks part of the three day Otaru Ushio festival. I usually go there with a friend who is originally from Otaru, but this year he had to work, so I ended up going with a magician friend, his wife, and another one of my friends.

We also had 5000 yen in coupons that you could use in one of the food tents at the festival. That was quite a lot of food, and we ended up not using all of them. I ran into a guy I know and tried to give him the rest of my coupons, but he at the same time tried to give me a stack of coupons for the same tent that he had got from some of his friends...

The weather was bad in Sapporo but it cleared up towards the afternoon and when we reached Otaru, it was quite nice. We had quite a bit of food (there was a nice Nepalese tent next to the tent were we bought lots of food with our coupons, for instance) and walked around and looked at the games and more.

When it was getting dark and there was an hour or so left until the fireworks, my magician friend had to leave. He normally does not work on Sundays, but the boss of the bar he works usually does. This Sunday the boss was too tired, so he called and said that my friend should come in and work instead. So he left right before the fireworks.

I waited around for the fireworks with my friend, and we also joined another friend of mine who was there with his girlfriend. We got a great seat for the fireworks, and the weather conditions were great for fireworks, so that was very nice.

On the way back to the train station, my friend who is taller than I am but still weighs less than 40 kgs wanted to eat more. We ended up buying ice cream from a shop where they spoke a lot to her and gestured at a menu with pictures to me, haha. How can Japanese people stay so incredibly skinny when they seem to eat more than I do (and do zero exercise)? According to my friend who worked at a place where they had several women working during the daytime, the answer is that they only eat ice cubes for lunch, so they can have good food in the evenings and still not get fat...