On April

April is the turning point in the Japanese calendar. Specifically, the point where the air turns warm overnight and we begin the doomish march to summer, with its 100% humidity. But before then we might have at least a few scant weeks of spring - balmy skirt weather, cakes in the park, cherry-blossoms. I got to see the very earliest blossoms in March, actually - by coincidence I booked an appointment at a hairdresser's on a street in Nagoya which, for some reason, gets the sakura about two weeks before anywhere else in the city. It was completely unexpected and I threw my cardigan off in delight.

Sadly, the rest of the all-too-brief cherry-blossom season was disappointing. There were a lot of rainy days, and I was too busy with the new school year and a visit from my family to attend any proper hanami parties (read: outdoor drinking, picnic blankets, ordering pizza delivered to your local park to be eaten under falling petals). While I was with my parents, however, I did get to see some great blossoms in Hikone, a town well-known for its castle. To be honest, with the hanami season the blossoms aren't always as impressive as you might hope, but I think it's its role as the harbinger of spring which makes it so lovely - the gooey air mellowed by breezes, the food stalls, the skies. All will be well for the next couple of months, apart from all the MASSIVE BUGS EVERYWHERE. (Today I saw an ant the size of a dachshund, and accidentally crushed a bug that left a bright orange mess all over my hands, all in the space of five minutes.)

April was generally a bit chaotic, with the new school year and introduction to a load of new kids, classes and schools, as well as my family visiting, so there's not a lot to report. I do have one other highlight of the month: the fire festival at Tejikara in Gifu Prefecture, which is wonderful and definitely really, really dangerous.

I'm not competent enough to explain the historical significance of this festival, and I suspect there really isn't any, apart from 'we like to show how good we are at running through fireworks shirtless', so I'll link you to Gifu's tourist board website here, but basically a lot of shirtless men carry portable shrines filled with gunpowder, a bunch of fireworks are set off, and the men walk through cascades of firework sparks carrying the shrines with seemingly little trouble. Also, some of the shrines featured Jibanyan, a character from the popular kids' anime Yo-Kai Watch, for whatever reason. It was difficult to get pictures due to the lighting, general chaos and the fact that I'd been playing on my phone all day and had 4% battery left. We also had to stand very far away, because of all the fire and fireworks and fire, so it was pretty hard to see the men themselves with my own eyes, let alone through a crappy phone camera at night, and none of my pictures of them carrying the shrines through the fireworks really came out right. But I hope I can get a bit of the spirit across here.

That last picture is the most important one.