Passing Away

So far this August, the weather has been hotter than previous years. Unfortunately, it's been hard on the elderly people we know with one of our neighbours passing away last week. A few days later, Ayako's grandmother also passed away after going for a walk outside. She was 96 years old and so she had 8 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren. We attended the wake and the funeral this past Tuesday and Wednesday.

Here is a photo taken a few years ago of Ayako with her mother and grandmother:

Hanabi (fireworks)

On Saturday night, Ayako and I took an hour and a half drive to the city of Fukuroi to watch their fireworks display. It's the largest in the area with 30,000 fireworks being set off. We had gone to this same fireworks 4 years ago and so we remembered the enormous crowds and the hour-long wait to get on the crowded train to come back. Since we were driving this time, we found a small park area about 3 kilometres away where we had a clear view of the fireworks, but could easily leave afterwards.
Here are some of the photos I got of the fireworks:








And here are some short videos taken of the fireworks: