Saga

The Day

The International Hot Air Balloon Festival is hosted in Saga Prefecture, Kyushu every year.  It is one of the largest festivals in Japan and the largest hot air balloon festival in all of Asia (and Asia’s HUGE).  So with the help of Masahiro-san and Ai-chan we navigate the express train system for about an hour to get to Saga.  Over the span of four days, one million people pass through the open barren rural countryside of Saga to enjoy hot air balloon displays, races and competitions.  We arrive with maybe about 200-300 thousand people there since it’s the last day.  No biggy, I’m from LA, I’m used to insane amounts of people and traffic but it was still the most people I’ve seen in one place so far here in Japan at one time.  There is a huge embankment about a mile long (or 1.61 km in metric) I’m guessing where sit and stand too get a view of the huge open field where balloons descend and where the night’s show will be held.  Daytime activities include a fair-like collection of booths selling tons of delicious food, lottery drawings and game booths.  We saw a kid with an awesome punching glove extender arm thing that looked like it came straight out of a cartoon and was made by ACME that we wanted but couldn’t find the booth for sadly.  By the time we had watched a few balloons come down gently crash into the field and see immediately get swarmed by droves of children after the announcers specifically tell them not to and laughing about it we go for some food.   I still wish I could eat more since there was so much I didn’t get to try but it was still awesome.

The Night

We found an awesome seat somehow and watched a wonderful show of music and fire.  Need I say more?  Music and fire!  Anyways, they lined up about 30 or so hot air balloons into three rows and coordinated them with music as they blasted their igniters.  If I can ever figure out how to get a video up, I’ll upload a video I took.  The end finale ended with fireworks, and for those of you who are wondering no hot air balloons were in the sky at the time that would just be stupid.  I’ll just leave you with not one but two sets of collages illustrating the awesomeness that could never be described as well with words.