Friday was a fun day. After only half a day of work, I Kintetsued it back to good old Kyoto for our SCTI reunion meeting. We shared horror stories about our internships--making me thankful my job was working out. But I can only listen to people whine about how antisocial and serious their workplaces are for so long; it seems a standard feature of the Japanese workplace: the very same people who'll go out drinking with you every week after work are dead silent and intensely focused on their jobs during the day. The interns near me and my gaijin boss are much more conversational, fortunately. After some awkward mingling with company higher-ups (though free food can break through any ice it seems), we ran off to Osaka.

Having seen big American shows like the ones in Detroit and New York in person, my first Japanese fireworks show left me mildly impressed.

We emerged from the subway station to the sound of explosions and the sight of bright lights in the sky. It looked like the city was being bombed at first, because we couldn't see the actual fireworks, only their reflections off the clouds. (Especially because hordes of people were already starting to leave.) But despite our running, the sound stopped before we could get a clear view of it. I thought we'd missed it.

Rather than blow up all their explosives in ten minutes like Americans tend to do, it turns out they'd been setting off little bursts every five minutes or so for the past hour. I kind of liked it being spread out--making it easier for people like us to arrive late. But it was also fairly uncoordinated--they felt the need to set off most all of them four or five at a time, so it was hard to really get into the groove of any individual explosion. Plus they were shooting them off from both sides of the park at the same time, giving us whiplash from looking back and forth so quickly. Ah well.

The ride back on the Loop Line was more packed than any train I'd been on since the Tokyo Loop Line. There's something comforting about not having any room to fall over-- each time the train jostles you your neighbor just shoves you back up. And yet there's also something to be said for, say, breathing, or being able to see the stop names out the window. Even Kintetsu was packed--a rarity since Nara's hardly a hot destination...