July 4th, 2004 late evening

To celebrate America:s birthday or just pleasing summer fun-things, there were fireworks and various-sized sparklers to be found late July 4th at Ikebukuro. According to my phone:s filename of "040704_2321~01" It was reeeeeeeally late.

These guys were using a fountain in a quasi-famous park. One of them would wade knee-deep into it and his friend would light the firework. Wet-guy would grab the explosive material and place it in an unused pipe. They stop pumping water sometime around nine-ish, so the available pipes and large quantity of water were ideal such an activity.

HEY! It takes a good long while for jeans to dry out. Even in summer. Even in summer.

Not a bad shot. Not a great one. More like an indie shot. If indie can be used as an adjective, that is.

From left to right we got roommate Drew, roommate Tim, and not-roommate Chuck.

Chuck perched at the edge of the fountain. He was mumbling something about "dropping his preciousness" or something. Then he batted a fish out of the water and ate it raw after smacking its head against a local rock.

My sushi comes from a can, thank you very much!

Chuck doesn:t drink beer or alcohol. I do, and had been that night. He is in the water, and I am not. I rest my case.

Looking back on the night, though. I kinda wish I had jumped in, if only for a few minutes. But then again, nah...

Missing my last train back home to North Kawasaki, I was forced to trek up to barren South Saitama. Pictured here is Drew digging in to MY CHIPS OMGF YOU STILL OWE ME, COSNER! But then again, he a nice enough guy to force himself to have a beer or two that night so as to keep me some quasi-drunken company while we played Castlevania X and watched Die Hard 3: Die Hardest.

Don:t ask me why Drew is holding an egg (raw, not hardboiled) in one hand and a beer in the other... I will only say that from that night on, I will never think of the stray cats in the neighborhood around Drew:s apartment in quite the same way. And I have Drew to thank for that.

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I should point out that I got a serious cold over the following week. These things happen to, from what I:ve gathered, everyone. Maybe the fountain had something to do with that. Maybe it is my diet of canned sushi. MAYBE it was the beer and sleeping in a freezing cold room. The world may never know.

What the world will know is that for the 4th of July, 2004 I spent a few nice moments hanging out with Americans watching small fireworks and drinking beer. Both of which are not necessary for enjoying a national holiday, but then again I have the whole "I live in Japan" factor so things are different for me. "Hey, DM, why don:t you own more than one pair of shoes?" -Because I:m in Japan and I can:t afford new ones. "Hey, DM, why do your camera pictures suck? Make them bigger." -Because I use a 30-dollar 2003-model cell phone to take them. I can ADJUST them to be bigger with my 1337 HTM1 h4xx0r sk!11s if you want, they would look some thing like this...

or...

But they are still teh crap, Nick. Teh.

PEACE!!