Hotaru – Tokyo Fireflies

A couple of evenings ago I went to the Chinsanzo Hotel gardens to see the fireflies released there at the start of every summer. I usually go every year but this year there were so many of them I just had to return early tonight with my camera. Capturing fireflies (hotaru in Japanese) is very tricky even with the best of preparations, and I just had my camera, no stand as usual. Although the water is very clean at these gardens there is far too much light pollution for the insects to breed there, although I have see native fireflies in the western parts of Tokyo many times, in the suburbs near the mountains in Hachioji for example, where there are no street lights and very little traffic after dark.

To make the fireflies feel welcome the usually well lit gardens are darkened down considerably, and this photo of mine is almost nothing like what you will see in real life. With the naked eye all you will see is a myriad of small, faintly pulsing lights in near absolute darkness. Obviously this is wonderfully poetic and fantastic experience, but still quite different from photographs. It was far too crowded for me to be able to relax and concentrate on holding my camera steady, so I only had time to get one decent photo. Maybe I will try again next year!