The World Famous Nagaoka Fireworks

We made plans in the schedule to be in Niigata doing Missionary Interviews in time for the Nagaoka Fireworks this year.  (Next year will be our last chance to see them and who know what may be going on next year at this time).  Japan is famous for their fireworks and they really put on quite a show!!  About 300,000 people attend this show which means getting there is very difficult and reservations for the bus tour had to be made well in advance.  We went with President and Sister Yoshida and they made all the plans and reservations for us.

On our way to Nagaoka from Niigata on the bus with the Yoshida's

We arrived several hours early and had time to walk through a museum full of old artifacts from China.  This pictures was taken outside the museum.  It was very warm that day!!

The Yoshida's brought frozen drinks and onigiti (rice balls) to eat.

We sat on the ground covered with a blue tarp.  Of course, shoes are removed to keep it clean and placed on the edge of the tarp.  Japanese people are very used to sitting but we were not and our backs were pretty tired.

This picture doesn't even begin to show how many people were there

 but it was packed full of people on all sides of us for miles.

These were our friends behind us on the tarp.  They rode on the bus with us and we though it was neat that they wore their traditional summer yukatas. 

The lady in orange was our tour guide from the bus.

President and Sister Yoshida. He was recently released as Gary's counselor

in the Mission Presidency.  He is also a translator for the church. 

She served her mission with Gary 40 years ago.

The sky was beautiful before the fireworks even began because of the full moon.

We watched these fabulous fireworks for 2 full hours

Returning back to Niigata was a slow process.  There were hundreds of buses

trying to get out of town.  The would be one hour bus ride took about 3 hours. 

We finally arrived at our hotel about 1:30 AM.