Sumidagawa Fireworks Festival

The Sumidagawa Fireworks descend from the Edo-period river festivals of the eighteenth century, and they remain the capital's defining summer night. On the last Saturday of July, from 19:00 to 20:30, shells are launched from two sites on the river: the first between Sakurabashi and Kototoibashi, upstream of Asakusa, and the second between Komagatabashi and Umayabashi, just downstream. The first site hosts a competition among the country's leading pyrotechnicians, so the quality of the individual shells is as much the point as the scale.

The setting is what makes it: the fireworks burst over the river with the Tokyo Skytree on one bank and the old streets of Asakusa on the other, and the whole district turns out in yukata. The crowds are enormous, in the order of a million people along the banks, and the streets of Asakusa are closed to traffic and tightly marshalled. If you want a riverside spot, be there by mid-afternoon with a mat and water; the alternatives are a reserved seat in a riverside restaurant or on a hotel rooftop, booked well in advance.

Asakusa is easy to reach by subway and rail, though stations near the river are one-way controlled after the finale and getting away takes time. The display is postponed to the following day if it rains, and cancelled outright if both days are wet. Expect heat, sweat and a slow shuffle home, and know that many Tokyo residents prefer to watch from a bridge or a side street a little further off, where the view is partial but the crush is not.