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Fireworks explode at the 39th Sumida River Fireworks Festival, Tokyo.
The 39th Sumida River Fireworks Festival happened on Saturday, July 30, 2016. This year's festival was as massively popular as ever, with the usual combined spectator crowd of an estimated 800-900 thousand people occupying the riversides and bridges of the Sumida River in Taito and Sumida wards, in eastern Tokyo.

The Sumida River Fireworks Festival has two locations from where the fireworks are let off: one by Komagata Bridge, a little south of Asakusa, and one by Sakura Bridge, about 1.3km upstream. Although separate locations, the fireworks they let off are carefully coordinated, and enhance the spectacle by creating a superimposed and complementary effect. Each location let off approximately 10,000 fireworks in the hour and a half that the display lasted, for a total of over 20,000 colorful, spectacular, intricately crafted bursts of blazing light - all with the towering Tokyo Skytree in the background.
As usual dozens of lantern-lit pleasure boats lined up a little downstream, around the Asakusabashi/Ryogoku stretch of the Sumida River, full of parties there to enjoy themselves over food and drink on the water against a backdrop of fireworks, or what in Japanese are called "fire flowers" (hanabi ??).

Most vantage points - like the bridges across the Sumida River - are free, but there were 4,000 seats reserved along the Sumida River offering a ringside view for between 6,000 y...