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Japanese Fireworks


During the summer in Japan, fireworks festivals (hanabi taikai ) are held nearly everyday someplace in the country, in total numbering more than 200 during August. The festivals consist of large fireworks shows, the largest of which use between 100,000 and 120,000 rounds (Tondabayashi, Osaka), and can attract more than 800,000 spectators. Street vendors set up stalls to sell various drinks and staple Japanese food (such as Yakisoba, Okonomiyaki, Takoyaki, kakigori (shaved ice), and traditionally held festival games, such as Kingyo-sukui, or Goldfish scooping.

Even today, men and women attend these events wearing the traditional Yukata, summer Kimono , or Jinbei (men only), collecting in large social circles of family or friends to sit picnic-like, eating and drinking, while watching the show.

The first fireworks festival in Japan was held in 1733.

Senko hanabi (sen-kou hana-bi ) (incense stick firework) is a traditional Japanese firework. Essays about them date back to at least 1927.

They are a thin shaft of twisted tissue paper about 20 centimeters long with one end containing a few grains of a black gunpowder. The black composition consists of three basic chemicals: potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal.

The pointed end is lit and held straight down, so that the flame is at the bottom. After a few seconds a glowing, molten slag will form. This is reportedly potassium sulfide, which contains carbon from the charcoal. The molten ball will ignite the second phase of the senko hanabi, silently spraying an array of delicate branching sparks with a range of up to 20 cm.They are ignited away from the wind and held with a steady hand, so that the delicate molten head does not drop and that the two phases of ignition are completed. Senko hanabi are included in packets of fireworks and are ignited last amongst other fireworks.

Senko hanabi are said to somehow hypnotize the watcher into silence and to evoke mono no aware (translated as "an empathy toward things," or "a sensitivity to ephemera"), a Japanese term describing a flash of sadness felt when reminded of the beauty and briefness of life. The poignantly ephemeral has long been appreciated in Japan and is still felt in the quiet celebration of senko hanabi."

Italian pair selected as world 'cosplay' champion

A pair from Italy took the grand prize for costume role-players at an annual world championship in Nagoya on Sunday, beating contenders from 14 other countries.

The contest marked the climax of the World Cosplay Summit 2010, a signature summer event in the city which various entities including the Foreign Ministry jointly organized to enhance exchanges featuring characters in Japan-originated animated films, manga comics and games.

The winning pair, dressed as Link and Ganondorf, characters in a game titled "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess," performed an action- filled three-minute play on stage in front of an audience of about 15,000.

It is the second cosplay championship title for Italian contenders since the competition was launched in 2005. The summit itself in noncompetitive form was launched in 2003 to appreciate the unique subculture originated in Japan together with frenzied fans around the globe.

"I am happy for winning the title especially for people who have supported us," said 43-year-old Giancarlo Di Pierro after winning the competition with 30-year-old Luca Buzzi.

The Thai and Brazilian pairs earned the second-highest points and the Brother Award, an award for outstanding costume, went to the Thai pair.

"I was very happy for receiving this award because we worked for six months to make this costume," said Orawan Aggavinate, one of the Thai contenders.

The pair from Thailand played the roles of Cloud Strife and Bahamut SIN, characters from a game titled "Final Fantasy VII Advent Children."

Hundreds of cosplay enthusiasts including the finalists of the championship took part in the event which began Saturday. The 15 countries were Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Thailand and the United States.

Prior to Sunday's contest, people wearing samurai outfits with swords gave performances during a spin-off event called the World Samurai Summit at the same venue.

The samurai summit was held to promote understanding of the culture surrounding ancient Japanese warriors as the region produced powerful warlords Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi as well as the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, according to the organizers.

A New AIDS Plan for Americans, and New Hopes for a Vaccine

Researchers, policy makers and activists are busy preparing for the International AIDS Conference. The next conference begins Sunday in Vienna, Austria.

On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced its National HIV/AIDS Strategy. The plan aims to reduce new HIV infections by twenty-five percent within five years. It also aims to make sure infected patients get treatment more quickly.

HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. The government says sixty-five percent of Americans who discover they are infected get treatment within three months. The new plan calls for increasing that to eighty-five percent.

Thirty million dollars from the health care reform law is to go to support prevention activities, including expanded HIV testing.

Over one million Americans are living with the virus, out of an estimated thirty-three million people worldwide.

Last week, government scientists in the United States announced the discovery of two antibodies that raise hopes for an AIDS vaccine. They say these antibodies can stop more than ninety percent of all known strains of HIV. Antibodies are proteins that the body makes to help protect itself against infection.

Researchers made the discovery at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The director of its Vaccine Research Center, Gary Nabel, says each antibody blocks the virus from attaching to white blood cells.

GARY NABEL: "It reacts with that region, it inactivates the virus and the virus never has a chance to enter the cells that it would otherwise infect."

The antibodies were discovered in a man, known as Donor 45, whose body produced them naturally.

Patients with HIV must take medicine all their lives to prevent AIDS. Combinations of drugs are able to suppress the deadly virus in the body -- if not a cure, then the next best thing.

In another development, the United Nations reported Tuesday that the number of young people becoming infected with HIV in Africa is falling.

The U.N. AIDS agency gives credit to better use of preventive measures. It says young people in Africa are waiting longer to have sex. They are also having fewer sexual partners. And they are increasingly using condoms. As a result, the agency says HIV rates are falling in sixteen of the twenty-five hardest-hit countries in Africa.