August 8, 2002 - 8:17PM
Wes Ehrlichman

Today I helped to take down the preparations for the firework festival. It's strange to do more work for a government in a place where I'm not even a citizen than I've done for my own government my entire life, but I'm getting paid for this one so I guess it's ok. I'm extremely sunburned now though, after working in the sun for two out of three days in a subtropical climate. I also have a little bit of poison ivy and I've got dirt caked on two pairs of pants. Regardless, today was just work, and other than eating at a cool restaurant where somen noodles swam around in a small circular pool in front of you, it was pretty boring.

Yesterday though, I was the Imuta Lake Hanabi (Fireworks) Festival and it was definitely interesting. My boss Mister Yamaguchi picked me up at around 5:00 and we left for the festival. Because he is a government official we got to park up front, which meant I never got to see the parking spaces I made get used. When we got there I met the Kagoshima police. The one from my town, Kedouin seems the biggest. He's got to be at least 6' 4", which is pretty big for a Japanese guy.

Next I was given a chance to walk around the festival. At first glance it looked just like any small festival at home. With cotton candy stands and impossible to win booth games. Upon closer inspection though, there were some obvious differences...

Like this booth where they were selling octopus on a stick. It was so gross! They cooked it right in front of you too! Overall the prices seemed reasonable for carnival food. It was around $2 for an Icee, and there were coke machines all over with coke or iced coffee at the normal Japanese price instead of hiked up carnival prices.

One of the carnival games that seemed distinctly Japanese was one where there was a small pool of water that was filled with floating balloons with rubber bands on the ends. The object of the game was to use a twirled up wet tissue with a fishing hook on the end of it to pull one of the balloons out of the water. I think you got whatever was on a piece of paper inside of the balloon. Everyone I saw would lose their fishing hook because the tissue was getting too wet. I couldn't figure out why anyone would even try that game. It looked totally impossible. I guess that's the same as at home though.

Because this festival was in Japan, girls were randomly dressed in Kimonos.

This is my supervisor Mister Yamaguchi with his wife and his daughter, who is wearing a traditional Japanese Kimono. Mister Yamaguchi has been very very helpful in getting me adjusted to Japan, and earlier that day his wife made me the best lunch I've had since I got here. Here are a couple more girls in Kimonos.

The second set of girls are going to be students of mine when school starts in September. All of the students I've met so far have been really nice and seem to like to try their English out on me, even if they sometimes seem a little nervous.

Kimonos weren't the only choice of dress at the festival though, check this girl out!

I have no idea what she was wearing, but a lot of the fashion in Japan seems to be a mixture between the middle 80s and early 90s. Not like me. I look very new Millennium.

Not really. I actually just needed a good transition to that picture. The people in the background are playing Japanese Taiko Drums. They're really fun to watch. The performance seems to be as much about watching the people play the drums as it is listening to the cool drum music.

Mister Yamaguchi and I watched the drums for a little while, and almost immediately after the drum program ended the Fireworks started. I was getting antsy because we hadn't picked out a place to sit yet and as we walked around trying to find a place to sit I missed the first few fireworks. As soon as we sat down the fireworks stopped and a voice came over an intercom and started talking. I didn't have any idea what it was saying because it was all in Japanese, but it sounded like a list of something. A few minutes later the fireworks started again. They were way more exciting than the fireworks at home. There would either be really really big fireworks in succession, each with a really loud bang, or there would be a burst of a bunch of small fireworks going off at once for around a minute. Between each set there would be a long pause though were the announcer would read something. I later found out that this was a list of companies that had paid for the fireworks.

I'm not sure if it was this break in between each set of fireworks, but even though the fireworks looked amazing I wasn't having as much fun as I have during fireworks at home. During each of the breaks I started thinking about how much more fun it would have been if I had a family or some real friends there to watch the fireworks with me. Fireworks really aren't about seeing the pretty lights, but are more about hanging around with your family, your friends, and your community. It could be that. Or it could have just been that stupid break.

The fireworks went on for almost two hours, including the breaks. It started to get boring near the end, and then they announced the last three sets. The second of which was a really really cool firework named The Niagara Falls. It was basically a big string of small fireworks that stretched the entire kilometer of the lake from one side to the other. It was really the coolest single firework I've ever seen. Check out this picture.

At any rate, when the fireworks were over I had to stick around and make sure that everyone left safely. I am a teacher now after all. I was starting to get down though because I just watched fireworks away from my family.

I was wandering aimlessly around the festival grounds and a couple of Japanese families that were sitting in a circle called me over. They said, "Hey, I think you're our neighbor. Which house do you live in?"

I said, "The first house in the line of houses near Kedouin Chugakko (Kedouin Middle School)."

"Yeah, we're neighbors," they said, but their english wasn't quite as good as I'm making them sound. "We live five houses down from you on the other end. You should come over and party."

I told them it sounded like fun and they handed me a beer. It turns out that one of the guys is really into Wakeboarding so I might get to try out wakeboarding with them some time soon, and their son is into video games, so I may have someone to play with... albeit 4 years old :-) Oh well. I was really glad to have met someone near me. We exchanged numbers and I took a picture of the event. Here is the picture.

So even though I was down for part of the fireworks it ended up being a lot of fun and I ended up making friends with a nearby family. I'm very happy to be here, and every day it gets a little easier. Tonight is laundry night and rice maker night though, so wish me luck!