Creature Discomforts

Summer in Japan is the season of hanabi (fireworks - literally 'flower fire'). Displays here normally last a whole hour and, this being Japan, you are told beforehand exactly how many fireworks they are going to detonate in that time. The main Kobe event takes place in the Port area in August, and by all accounts is something of a spectacle. As indeed it should be - they are letting off 6,000 fireworks.

Unfortunately most of the hanabi displays around these parts are in August, when we shall be back in Northern Ireland to view the damage done to our home by a foul and inclement summer in Blighty. But we did manage to track one down on Awaji island, which is about 30 minutes by car from downtown Kobe. Awajishima is famous for two things - the 3.9km Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world, which connects it to the Honshu mainland, and being the epicentre of the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995. Not surprisingly, the islanders tend to celebrate the former, rather than the latter.

The event was held in the Prefectural Park, and the organisers made a whole day of it, with a snow machine (which coped surprisingly well in the scorching heat), a collection of sorry animals in various degrees of distress, and a full programme of traditional musical entertainment and lantern balancing.

An Englishman in Osaka already highlighted this very humourously in his blog article 'Animal Prison', but either there are no animal rights activists in Japan or, if there are, they are way too polite. Dotted around the park was a diverse collection of sorry animals, each of them the sole, sad representative of their species - Noah's Ark sponsored by Poundstretcher. People gawped at a fed-up fruit bat, a piqued penguin, a somewhat ticked-off tortoise and a very pissed-off possum - all of them being subjected to the most terrible child abuse (abuse by a child, that is). In the middle of all this was an innocent-looking fish tank, next to a harmless gecko, that contained a quite evil-looking scorpion (apologies for the picture quality below). The tank was open, and there wasn't an adult with a day-glo jacket proclaiming 'STAFF' to be seen.

But we were to witness far worse scenes of creature trauma when we happened upon the aquatic concentration tanks that housed the luckless octopi and hamo (a type of eel for which the Naruto Strait between Awaji and Shikoku is famous). Here the kids ran rampant, chucking the poor, slithering fish in the air, on the grass, and at their mates. All this taking place just a few feet away from where the creatures were soon to be put out of their misery by being either boiled (Mr Octopus) or barbequed (Mr Slithery Fish). A delightful combination of nutrition and entertainment.

The day just flew by and before we knew it, it was time for the fireworks (5,000 of them - as advertised). And we found out how they strung it out for an hour - by taking lots of fag-breaks in between the warimono and the katamono. But it's only their second year at Awaji island, so maybe they're still figuring it out. Or maybe the chap doing the barbeque was setting them off.