USA! USA! USA!

First, as a comment in the previous post notes, along with an e-mail from Andrew, last year's Fourth of July mystery has been solved in part. We hung out at my place for a while, then we watched "Mr. Holland's Opus." I'm pretty sure Andrew and I were the ones most excited about this prospect.

Tonight, as it was the Fourth here in Japan, I joined a few other Americans (and one skeptical Aussie) and bought a pack of fireworks at the convenience store (of course you can buy fireworks at the convenience store) and headed down to the banks of the Miya River. There, we blew them up. The show was over in about 20 minutes, and failing to save the big ones for last, the Grand Finale was: sparklers. But doing anything at all was something.

Our Aussie friend asked if we were going to sing the national anthem, and, if we were, she wasn't going to come. We hadn't thought of it -- but we almost did just to taunt her.

A lot of non-Americans assume we're all flag-waving support-the-U.S.-without-question people. We are not all those people. In fact, the Americans are usually the ones who are the least concerned with supporting "their country" and defending "their country." At least the ones I hang out with are.

Tonight, at karaoke, I thought about singing the national anthem. But even if I had decided to try it, it wasn't in the system. I sang Green Day's "American Idiot" instead. My friend Mike from the UK colored his applause at the end with a possibly sarcastic chant of "USA, USA, USA." Let the record show that I was not chanting.