Summer Nights Cruise

Fireworks and the Summer, you can't have one without the other

01.09.2008 90 °F

Ohayo gozaimasu (good morning),

On Sunday night I went with Jenny, Kara, and Andrew on Kagoshima's summer nights cruise; a ferry ride around the volcano with a fireworks show at the end. We met at Amu plaza, the center of Kagoshima, which houses restaraunts, shops, and an olypmpic size swimming pool on the FIFTH floor. Yeah, that one has to be seen to be believed. In the plaza they were holding a 24 hour charity tv thing for unicef.

We made our way to the port and even though we arrived half an hour early the boat was nearly full. That's Japan for you, everyone is always early, lateness is a very very bad thing here. My procrastination genes make that the hardest part of of living in Japan for me. That and the lack of peanut butter. The bottom floor of the boat was all tatami, and people took off their shoes to get on, I thought I'd seen it all with tatami in dressing rooms, but now I know they do tatami on boats too, who would've thought?
Anyway there was a very cool taiko performance on board, and then a raffle, and some kind of gameshow that I really couldn't understand, I wish my Japanese would imrove more quickly. Jenny and I made friends with a Japanese boy named Shouta. He was so cute, only about 2 years old, I gave him a frog shaped toothbrush cover (don't ask) and he loved us for the rest of the night. Such a good way to make friends with Japanese people, I should carry small toys with me always. Shouta's drunk grandfather was pretty fun to talk to too. If you think Japanese is hard to understand try slurred Japanese.
Last came the fireworks. They do fireworks right in this country! Sometimes in in America you can see fireworks that change colors all at once, but here they change color gradually from one side of the explosion to the other, very cool to watch. At the fireworks festival I went to last weekend, they had fireworks that continued exploding upward in a line, I'd never seen anything like it. This is very hard to describe so I will try to put up pics and a video, if I can figure out how, later.
Then it was time to go home and get ready for our first week of working with actual students. Ganbaremasu! (I will do my best!)
Summer nights, had me a blast. (yes I know cheesey)