Rice fields and parking lots

Last night I was invited to go with Rinako and her family to see the Fukuroi fireworks. Fukuroi is the town just a few minutes to the east of Hamamatsu. So I was picked up a little after my last class and bustled into the small car with her, and her daughter Yuri, her husband Masa and her mother (I forgot her name). Her mother is a pip. She understands quite a bit of English, I just haven't heard her use much. But boy, she is always on the move. I always see her either riding a bike, or running, or going somewhere in a hurry. And always in a skirt and every hair perfectly coifed. So we drove to Fukuroi, stopped at McDonalds for some french fries (mmmmm yummy), and pulled off the freeway to an adjoining field to set up camp, like hundreds of other people. It appears in the last year they paved over a large section of the fields for a parking lot for a huge used car dealer. Much sighing went on through the night by the family for the loss of the wonderful viewing sight. Not unlike the sighing I do over the loss of the trees back home everytime they build something new. Apparently this fireworks festival is more of a contest. So each section is bigger and brighter than the last. Some of the fireworks looked like shapes, such as hearts, smiley faces, butterflies, flowers, etc. My favorite was the one that looked like Saturn. The fireworks went on for 2 hours. Then within minutes, everybody in the fields had cleaned up everything and were back in their cars and on the road. I'm not sure if I was more impressed by the fireworks or the dissappearing masses.