Hanabi boom!

I have met my second friend from Couchsurfing! My new pal was in Matsue for a big physics conference. We hung out once during the week and I took him to my favorite bar, St. James Gate. Sunday after Suigo-sai round two (see next paragraph), my pal and maybe 5 or 6 of his pals and also my 3 pals (pal party!) all went out for a drink and then we took them to karaoke! It was a lot of fun to show some foreign - UK, Finnish, Israeli - friends around the little city a bit. Hooray Couchsurfing :)

So, as I said, this weekend was Suigo-sai. That is a huge fireworks (hanabi) festival in Matsue over the lake. It was so so beautiful. And really cute! They made faces, fish, Mickey Mouse shapes, and many others. There were some really awesome ones that shot out and stayed lit on parachutes which was even cooler when the parachutes floated over our heads and looked like jellyfish in the air. As you could guess from that, though, we were sitting downwind. A little (or a lot) smoke in the lungs and some ash sprinkled on us, but mostly not too bad. I went both days, Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday after the fireworks, we walked over to the other side of the lake where there was a stage and I saw an anime concert! Sounds like it could be pretty strange, but it was really just a Japanese girl dressed as a famous anime character, wearing an awesome blue wig, DJing anime songs. Some people got pretty into the dancing and I joined right in. The next night, the fireworks lasted twice as long and there were about twice as many people. I really don't think I've seen that many people in one place in a long time. It was crazy. We sat behind a little family with the cutest little girl who would watch with her mother and say "hanabi boom!" but instead of boom would use the Japanese version of the word. It was so adorable. But it was so fun and we went to one of my favorite restaurants after, Wara Wara. They have some American food, like a tower of onion rings and "spicy" fries that really just taste like Arby's normal fries. Still great though.

This is as good as iPhone 3GS cameras get when trying to capture fireworks.

Festival massage, anyone?

Who would have thought that children trying to stand inside of beachballs on water would be the cutest?

First anime concert. Pretty awesome.

These photos were borrowed from pals on facebook with much better cameras than mine:

I think I can safely say these were the best fireworks I've ever seen.

Although it is very easy to get caught up in how frustrating some things are in Japan, yesterday I spent some time walking and could easily take the time to appreciate the place I live. On my way to the pool for my almost-always-weekly swim, I saw a black kite carrying an eel between its claws and saw it land in a nearby tree. On the way home, I saw a giant heron fly into the same tree on a lower branch. There may be spiders everywhere, but they wont hurt people except for maybe a heart attack if you run through the web. They really do look cool though. My walk home from the pool usually includes a stop at Aeon, the mall in Matsue, and the closest place to get relatively cheap groceries. Walking home from that, I walk three blocks along the little river near my house. Adorning the edges are sunflowers, and in the water are turtles and ducks making quiet nighttime noises. The shortcut down a side street I take runs along a little waterway where, if you look hard at night, you can see little crabs run into the water away from the approaching footsteps. Japan can be pretty cool sometimes.