Light 'em Up

So, this happened like last month, but I am just getting around to writing about it now, sorry. So, every year for the Chinese New Year, Nagasaki has a lantern festival (apparently). As always, I learned about this too late, much like the Naked Man Festival the week before it. In fact, the only reason I found out about it was because someone had heard that love hotels were a cheap alternative to real ones and he wanted to stay in Fukuoka for cheap before going to the festival, and apparently I was the expert on Fukuoka love hotels.
That week was also a week with a Saturday working day, but I had already used all my daikyuu, and I wasn't keen on dipping into my nenkyuu anymore since I had just done that last week. I decided that the festival was a night festival anyway, so arriving after work should be fine since Nagasaki was fairly close.
So, after 8 hours of sitting around doing nothing, I set out to Nagasaki. Unfortunately, 12 hours of sitting left me incredibly drained, and by the time I arrived, the events were over. So, I hoped that Sunday the sun would set early or something so I could see the lit lanterns.
I managed to find a hotel (I'm so good at planning ahead), grabbing the last open room, cutting off the person who came in a minute after me. In the morning, I found out some other ALTs had come for the festival. I met up with one of them that branched off from the group. We explored and looked at the lanterns in the light.
Along the way, we ran into some old man. My friend has a strange ability to cause creepy people talk to her. So he began to tell us how his grandchildren were in high level American universities or working for NASA. I told him I wanted to work for NASA too one day, but he told me that NASA was an elite group of smart people from around the world, so it would be hard for an American to get in. I missed the part about "American" and thought he meant me specifically, so I joked that I would be a janitor, but my friend was offended because she understood all of what he said.
Later, we met some other ALTs, including a Nagasaki one, and went to the Peace Memorial. It was even less exciting than the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and we mostly just talked about the difference between post-WWII Japan and post-WII Germany's reactions to their pasts as reflected in their choices of monuments. Then we got some food.
All-in-all, not a lot of lanterning. By the time it finally started getting dark, I had to leave. I was fairly upset that I had missed the lanterns lit up, but seeing them in the day was pretty cool. I just had to use my imagination. Missed all the dragon dances and things, too, though, which kind of sucks. But maybe I'll be in China for New Year some year.