Shinto Wedding

The predominant religion in Japan is Shinto (神道), which means "the Way (道) to Gods (神)".
In a traditional Shinto wedding, the bride wears the traditional white wedding kimono dress called shiro-muku (白無垢, where 白 means "white" and 無垢 means "pure, innocent"). The bride's wig is usually prepared in a style called bunkin-takashimada (文金高島田), and decorated with golden accessories and decorations that resemble a spike, symboling fertility. This wig is usually fitted in the place of the wedding, since it cannot fit in the car. In these pictures, however, the bride is wearing a white hat, named 角隠し (Tsunokakushi), which is traditionally worn to veil the bride's horns of jealousy, ego and selfishness. It also symbolized the bride's resolve to become a gentle and obedient wife. （→いいお嫁さんになります！） Another name for 角隠し is 綿帽子 (Wataboushi).
It takes at least three hours to dress up woman in bridal kimono.

The groom is dressed in a Montsuki kimono (紋付) with a short haori overcoat (羽織) bearing the family crest with pleated hakama (袴) pants.

Fireworks - 神宮外苑花火大会

Tonight there was another big fireworks event, the Jingu Gaien Hanabi Taikai (神宮外苑花火大会). About 10'070 different fireworks were displayed in one hour. This time I was comfortably sitting on a beautiful terrace not so far from the main place, but far from the crowd and - more important! - far from the terrible heat at ground level.


This is my favourite picture.


In this picture, and in a few others below, there is an interesting rippling effect. I think it was due to the combination of high zoom (200mm), long exposure time (F/9, 1.6 secs in the picture above), not so expensive tripod, and wind.
But I like the final result, the picture is more interesting ^_^




The terrace has one drawback, though. In fact, the wind was pushing the smoke in our direction, so that in the long sequences we got more smoke than fireworks. Despite of this, the picture above suggests clouds and rain, and I like it.




My 2nd best.


My 3rd best.






Vulcan ^-^





And you? Which pictures do you like most?