Tour Report on July 29, 2017

We would like to thank all of our guests choosing us TFWT to spend their own precious time and exploring around the central Tokyo, Marunouchi with us. We always feel so honored to take and show our guests around the beautiful garden fulfilled by the hospitality of our Imperor and Impress. This day, we welcomed 28 guests from 12 countries as Spain, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Austria, U.S.A., Columbia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, India, Nepal, Needless to say, it was an hot day, but we were delightful to stroll around the “summer-mode” garden with our friendly guests.

This day, a big firework event was to be held at night. The most common and most traditional one, known as “Sumida-River firework festival”. It is said that this firework event originates from the memorial service held in 1732 around this Sumida-River. The 8th Tokugawa shogunate named Yoshimune held this service to mourn the spirits of the countless dead whom suffered from famine and cholera, losing their life’s at last.

Sumida-River firework became an annual event since 1978. 2017 year festival event just counted the 40th festival. To celebrate its own anniversary, the number of the fireworks increased up to 22,000 while 20,000 were the familiar figures for this festival.
Since this Sumida-River firework is a megaton range, the viewers counts over 980,000 every year. Though, this years’ viewers were 748,000 according to the research . (except the viewers watching the TV broadcast! ) Well, still incredible figures, aren’t they? It was because of heavy rain that started to pour from the evening and kept raining till the end of the festival. More to say, other firework festivals were held around Tokyo as Urayasu (Chiba, near Tokyo Disneyland) and Tachikawa(in the West side of Tokyo) on the same day,
and to our surprise, none of them were postponed. Most of us recognized at this time that firework events could be continued no matter of rain. (On the other hand, if Lightning strikes somewhere, the event would be stopped or canceled).

Many Japanese women prefer to wear “yukata” (a sort of summer kimono) to firework events and this could make you feel more summer feature of our country. More to say, you can experience the “kimono” wearing at the end of our tour also. Why not you just join us in all means? Your participant is always welcome!

(posted by Nori)