Dougie Muyo Day 65 - The Night of the Carnival.

Today was a rather… interesting day, interpret that as you may. As you, the gentle reader, may or may not know (for I have not talked about it as frequently as I might have) today was our final exam. No more classes, homework, studying, anything. I think that my parents will be happy to hear that things went much more smoothly this time around. For one thing, I studied like a mad monkey messiah, reviewing everything I could until my brain hurt too much to continue , and then I watched Trigun, which made my head hurt even more with its stupid ending, so then I went to bed. Then I got up this morning and studied some more, so when the test rolled around, I was just bursting with Nihongo goodness to spew forth unto those blank lines. I also made sure that I was not the last one on the sign up for the oral exam, so I didn't have to stare at the carpet until I started hallucinating this time. In fact, I only had a single question left when I had to step out for the oral test, so after taking care of that, I dashed off a string of hiragana onto the final line and went on my merry way.

So to celebrate I finally had an actual meal at Coco's, going with several other students, and it was tasty and not all that expensive. I then joined my fellow koto players to practice the pieces that we are going to perform during the closing ceremony. I think that there are going to be a couple songs that the teachers in the adjoining hall are going to be horribly sick of hearing by Saturday (there are a couple sections where we {and by that of course I mean 'I'] have been having trouble with the fingering and so we've been running over them over and over).

After finishing with that I decided to make one final run to Viva City to buy manga, since I need to have everything I want mailed home packed up and ready for shipping tomorrow. Nothing really interesting to report there; I just filled the gaps in the series that I've been collecting, did a bit of grocery shopping so that I would have stuff to eat in the morning, and headed back to the Center.

Where I ran right into a solid wall of humanity. The fact that I had conveniently forgotten was that today was the big fireworks display, which draws something like half a billion people into three square inches of space (perhaps on the trip out from the Center I should've taken more serious note of all the stands going up along the road…). After forty five minutes of walking I said to 'hell with it' and jumped my bike out into the road. That speed things up a bit, and I got back to the Center in time for the fireworks to start.

It was a _long_ display. More than an hour if I remember correctly. They also detonated very low to the ground. After I'd been wandering for a while, I was surprised to see that the launch tubes were at the end of a break only about a hundred or so yards away, and they only ascended about that much before exploding. Several times I saw burning fragments hit the water. Very cool, if something a bit outside the norm of what I'm used too.

I ended up traveling on my stomach the length of the beach, and for a Doug, that's a very expensive way to go indeed. There was so much delicious food everywhere; when they make candy apples here, they really go all out. The apple was dipped in boiling… um… candy, and then cooled, so that it has this hard shell over it. The apple also got itself nice and baked in the process, and so once I bit through the shell it was all tasty and soft inside, and then there was the deep fried pork shishkabobs, and the cotton candy…

So I saw lots of pretty explosions, and stuffed myself stupid. What could top that? Why going to bar and singing kareoke for three hours of course. That was fun, especially when I got almost the entire bar joining in on John Denver's 'Country Roads."

And right now I see the stupid old sun starting to come up. Maybe I’ll share more funny stories tomorrow, but I think that right now I am going to sleep.