One of many reasons why I can enjoy the turning of the seasons is thanks to a magazine called Pia. Every season they create a guidebook to the Kanto area regarding events, activities, food and everything else you can do during that particular season.
I love to buy this magazine, circle the events I want to go and then slot a day out for it on the calendar ahead of time.
The Summer Pia edition features all the fireworks festivals and summery activities available, but one that particularly caught my eye was the promise of being able to see fireflies in the greater Tokyo area.
For me, summer just isn't summer without fireflies, and most of the Kanto area is woefully low on them.
The fireflies could be found at Hotel Chinzanso on what turned out to be the outskirts of Tokyo, housed in a massive park the hotel has.
Apart from the bad point that the hotel was far, far away from any train station, it was an absolutely amazing PR event. Anyone could enter the park; you didn't have to be a guest at the hotel. Entrance into the park was free, and after you had your fill of seeing fireflies, the hotel offered a free shuttle service to Ikebukuro Station.
The park, for what it's worth, is absolutely glorious. There's a nice river running through what is actually more of a valley than a park. You descend into it, the soft lights of the hotel and some black lighting (fireflies shy away from anything else) guiding you on the steps down toward the river. It seems like a really nice place to get lost in for a while.
When we went there, the place was packed with people, all who were saying, "Do you see them? I don't see them. Where are they?" to one another in fierce whispers.
The park had put a few of them in a glass enclosure behind the waterfall, which could be accessed by this little tunnel, but apart from that, there seemed to be none. Maybe we were too early, I wondered.
Upon deeper exploration into the park, I realized it was incredibly easy to spot the few fireflies meandering around the river the same way it's easy to spot a celebrity in a crowd who didn't wear a good enough disguise. Someone would shout "Firefly!" and everyone would run to wherever that person was pointing, and then others would join in with, "Yes, it's over there! Look!" all of them pointing.
One firefly seemed to give fan service by lazily floating around the heads of observers, prompting everyone to ooh and ahh as they extended their hands upward, hoping the firefly might land on them. It finally landed on one woman, and she was instantly surrounded by people, all who wanted more of a close-up look at a firefly.
I grew up in a small town, where every summer I would go out into a backyard overwhelmed by fireflies and see how many of them I could catch. For me, fireflies were as commonplace as pigeons are in the city.
Yet there I stood, watching people go crazy over just seeing a handful of fireflies.
All of that meant that fireflies are now so rare here that no one was experiencing what I had taken for granted as a kid.
Watching the fuss people made over the little insects, I couldn't help but feel sad.
