fireworks over the mountains

So tonight my massive bag o nutritious calories withered out around 8:00 and I was ready to huff it to the observation room again. It had probably been over a couple hours since I had been on my feet. I was pretty strong and made it to the observation room relatively easily, relative, or its dreaded adverbial form relatively, being the operative words when talking about my strength, endurance. Anyway, I sat down a space from my usual center—an obaasan was there wearing, I don’t know, lavender, pink, I’m going to go with a pair of pink checkered pajamas (ooh, I like how that turned out) and was already kicking back with her feet on the other chair, relaxing. I relaxed too, with my head in my hands, waiting for the usual 85 blood pressure fura-fura, dizziness, to pass. I pulled out my pad and laid it on the table and waited for inspiration to spring out of my dizziness and show me what to do in the TI tunnel scene. But lo and behold what do I see… so you read the title and know it was fireworks. At first I thought it was more neon there, suddenly appearing over the dark mountains, crackling to its end. It didn’t take me long to realize, fireworks.

Hanabi. That’s what they are called in Japan, which translate out to something much more beautiful than the pragmatic sounding fireworks. Hey, they did their job, smiles for everyone. Hanabi translates to flower fire. Hana. Flower. Bi. Fire. Much more beautiful image isn’t it?

Anyway, it was a pleasant summer diversion in a climate controlled hermetically sealed environment, watching the edges and streaks of fireworks crackle their last over the mountain range like the first burst I saw until they started shooting higher, got to see whole spheres, spheres within spheres do their Innoshima best over the mountain line.

“Innoshima Hanabi Taikai,” the woman in the pink checkered pajamas told the room. More than once.

Innoshima? That’s pretty damn far. I think it took us an hour at least from Onomichi across many bridges. My wife, her mother and I go across these bridges to Shikoku once every two months so I am pretty well acquainted with how far it is so I can say the distant fireworks without any irony. So I was watching the distant fireworks pop their brilliant rings over the line of dark mountains. Jewels of faded fire in the night sky.

“Kirei,” they said.

“Kirei ne.”

Classic Japanese obaasan.

When the fireworks were over, or on their break as the Hanabi Taikai obaasan in the pink checkered pajamas insisted. When the fireworks continued to be over the ladies turned to comparison shopping about the different local hospitals. I started to put pen to paper and did a job good enough job to reward myself with a mixberry HiiChuu (I’m syllablizing it according to the katakana on the package), a chewy candy sold only in Japan (?). An elevator door opened behind me and said in a soft female voice something about marimas, probably Roku-kai mairimasu, we have arrived at the sixth floor. Everything’s so chatty here. As it shut:

“Doaa ga shimarimasu.”