The fireworks thunder at the bottom of a bowl. Atami is a hot-spring town wedged between mountains and sea, and its bay forms a natural amphitheater—a mortar-shaped hollow where the sound of each shell bounces off the surrounding hills and comes back amplified, again and again, until the whole town seems to shake. Unlike the great once-a-year festivals, Atami fires its display more than a dozen times across the seasons—spring, summer, autumn, winter—so that a visitor who came simply to soak in the hot springs may find, on an ordinary evening, that the sky has filled with fire. There is something generous about this rhythm, fireworks woven into the ongoing life of a resort town rather than saved for a single sacred night. The finale is the great aerial Niagara, light spilling across the entire width of the bay while the mountains throw the sound back over the water. And the signature pleasure of Atami is to watch it from the hot springs themselves—to sit in steaming water, the cold sea air on your face, and look up as the bowl of the bay fills with brightness and the hills around you roar.