Hanabi (fireworks)

Went back to Mizube no Mori Park today to listen to some more music artists, it is surprising how many songs I recognized, and then watched the fireworks. However, before I share the videos from the singing and the fireworks I am going to make you sit through some more random things I found while wandering in Japan today (and scrolling down past this is cheating).
First off, I know this is a toilet, but on the control panel there was actually an option to listen to music, if I had been the only one in the bathroom I would have tried it, but there are certain points where I draw the line on looking like a total gaijin.

I also found a children's section within a book store in Nagasaki's 3rd mall today. They had many interesting titles, many of which were written with furigana (a pronunciation guide for the kanji). This particular book I had to get a photo of though just because it is one of those classics from childhood, I'm sure you can recognize it despite the Japanese writing.

We also came across another movie theater in the mall and noticed the prices on food:

Popcorn and drinks are actually a little cheaper at theaters in Japan, but tickets, I've heard, run closer to $20 a piece.
The last oddity I found yesterday was this combination washer and dryer, all in one. I was not aware that such things exists, but I guess if they exist it would be in a space conscious place like Japan (and a steal at $700), even if most households do not use dryers.

After looking around two malls, at one I purchased 2 CDs and am now a member there (if I spend roughly 40,000 yen I get 2,000 yen, I know that's only 5%, but it's better than nothing), we headed out to the park around 6:30. There seemed to be more people there that night.

The photos are a little blurry, the bright lights seem to mess with my camera's auto focus.
Next are two short videos from various performers, there isn't much to see as we were pretty far back from the stage, but you can hear the music, the quality is alright, there is some distortion though because it was so loud. In the second video you can hear my roommate and I having a brief discussion about what I am doing at the beginning.

And lastly we have the fireworks display, this rivaled anything I've seen in the US in real life and put our 4th of July celebration to shame. It went on for about twenty minutes straight. The first video has the first 3 minutes or so, the auto focus jumps around a little bit, but it looks pretty good overall. The second video is almost 7 minutes and contains the finale. I had considerable difficulty uploading these and think I will use my youtube account from here forward to display videos.

So that was the end of my second weekend in Nagasaki, next weekend is the Kunchi festival, which means once classes are over on Friday I will not be getting in any rest time for the rest of the weekend. Fortunately, I do have Mondays off right now which helps. However, once things settle down I will have a lot to share on my first Japanese festival.