Stripes.

One of the best things about being an English teacher in Japan is the vast array of people you meet from all over the world (or at least the English speaking world). Suddenly it's rare to have a group of friends who share an accent, and getting carded at the pub is a cool excuse to check out the drivers licenses of the globe.

Another benefit is that it provides an excuse to celebrate an inordinate number of national holidays; before I didn't even know when Canada day was, now it's marked on my calender and I'm stockpiling maple syrup in anticipation.

In any case, living among such a vast quantity of Americans, it seemed remiss of us not to do something to mark the anniversary of the nations, uhhh... nationhood. You can only imagine my shock and disappointment when I found that the only 'official' July 4^th celebration was held behind the secure perimeter of the Sasebo Fleet Activities facility. 'This shall not stand!' I muttered to Lani and Laura and set about organizing a suitable homage to George Washington et all.

Laura and Lani... ummm... in my bathtub. Don't ask me how this happened (or why they were both in my tiny bathroom AT THE SAME TIME.) But we were lucky there were no fatalities. Note how Lani is reaching out for help while I'm standing taking photos. What are friends for, right?

Not that there was much organization to do, seeing as our idea of a celebration involved those two great pillars of Americana- fireworks and hard liquor. It's been so long since I've had ready access to explosives (what with Australia being one big tinderbox and all) that my childlike joy could hardly be suppressed when I walked into Jusco and found an insane quantity of near military grade explosives to choose from, all available over the counter.

So after work I got back to my apartment to find Laura and Lani already engrossed in beer-swilling and MTV watching. There were many toasts (some even non-ironic) to Lani's homeland, then we wandered down to the park to set off our stash of sky flowers. For some reason we had this idea that it would be cool to set ALL the freakin' things off simultaneously; while the visual result was indeed spectacular, it generated enough noise that we actually ran away before we were arrested under some festivity-crushing noise-pollution ordnance or something.

Fireworks! There's enough firepower here to level and entire civilization (of ants). I think the bottle of I.W. Harper is a nice touch too, it really screams 'responsibility'.

At this stage the bar seemed a good idea, so we wandered off to Playmates, then proceeded to party with the Navy for much of the night, I was amazed by how many of them didn't actually realize it was July 4^th (or 5^th actually at this stage) unpatriotic sods! Still they bought us beer which was nice. Happy birthday America!

Oh say can you see?

Shaun.