It was a relatively short 25 minute drive to the Oarai Fireworks Festival in Ibaraki. We left around 15:30 and got to the area around 16:00. As expected, there was a decent amount of traffic. What made it worse, was that there was only one entrance and exit to the only public parking lot. Luckily, there was a traffic light which had some relatively ineffective 3rd party traffic guards. The traffic was grueling as three sides converged on a narrow one lane road. We waited around 30 minutes before entering the parking lot.

Parking was a reasonable ¥1,000 for the day. The parking lot was pretty filled and we had to head towards the back to find a spot.

The restroom situation was pretty disastrous. There were only small public restrooms available for use. Typically, when we attend large events, there are separate areas with large amounts of portable toilets set up to alleviate congestion. This was not the case at this festival. The men’s had little to no line while the women’s line was ridiculously long. We passed by three different restrooms and all of them had really long lines. We found the shortest of the three and probably waited for a good 20 minutes or so.

After our bathroom ordeal we headed to the food stalls. They had a pretty good selection along a gravel pathway.

Oarai Fireworks Festival Festival Food

We made a number of stops along the way. The karrage was pretty good. It was crunchy on the outside, had good flavor, and was juicy on the inside. The two meat skewers we got were just okay. They had good flavor, but the meat was pretty chewy and difficult to break off cleanly. The grilled squid was good. It had nice texture and was flavorful. The okonomiyaki was pretty dense. It was well seasoned, but maybe a little heavy on the cabbage and a little light on the noodles.

Note: Definitely bring your own hand sanitizer and napkins/wipes. The toilets did not have any soap and the toilet paper was prone to running out. In addition, some of the food we ate was a little messy. All the vendors we asked did not have any paper napkins.

As we were heading back to the car to pick up our tarp, the fireworks started. We mistakenly thought the show started at 18:30. It actually started at 18:00. We made our way back to the car and forwent the tarp on the beach plan. Instead we sat down on a staircase close to the car. We were able to enjoy our food and the drinks we had gotten earlier at FamilyMart.

Oarai Fireworks Festival Fireworks

Once again Japanese fireworks never fail to impress. The shapes, colors, and designs were like nothing we’ve seen in the US. Here were a few of our favorites. The show was very timely. It started and stopped right on time.

The firework show wrapped up on time at 19:30. Immediately, after its completion there was a mad dash back to the cars. Fortunately, we were pretty close to our car and were able to move a little closer to the exit. Despite this, we still got caught in about 45 minutes of traffic trying to leave the lot. Since we were further back in the lot, all the parked cars closer to the exit, merged in. We were probably sitting at a standstill for about 30 minutes before we starting moving.

Final Thoughts

We really enjoyed the Oarai Fireworks Festival in Ibaraki. Its close proximity to our home was a definite plus. The traffic flow was pretty rough though. In the future we definitely want to get there a lot earlier to secure a better parking spot.

More to Come…

Here is the link to their website.