I was kind of rude to a guy today because I was trying to watch a free air show.

We live along one of the approaches to the Iruma Air Base, a Japan Air Self-Defense Force base and that means we constantly get fly-overs from transport aircraft, helicopters and the occasional fighter.

Once a year, though, if the weather’s nice, we can see the practice for the annual Iruma Air Show. Fighters and transports fly over head in formation and some demonstrate combat tactics. On November 3–Culture Day–if we look to the West we can see parts of the air show itself.

Today She Who Must Be Obeyed came back from work and mentioned that we should go out and see the planes. It turns out we got to see a large portion of the performance put on by Blue Impulse, Japan’s version of the Blue Angels/Thunderbirds.

We saw lots of hearts made from smoke and lots of loops and, then, all of a sudden some guy on the street was asking where I was from. Because I was, for a brief time, considering going into the U.S. Air Force as a pilot; because fighters are just cool gadgets and I like cool gadgets; and because I figured he was either selling religion or crap, my initial reaction was “I’m from fuck you.” (For the record, I didn’t say that. I said I was from the USA but didn’t actually look at him at first.)

Eventually we figured out that 1) he’s from Germany, and 2) he’s been my neighbor for 14 years but we somehow never managed to meet or see each other. For most of that he lived down the street and around the corner and up the hill, but for the past year or so he’s lived across the street and we still didn’t see each other. That surprise was what prompted him to interrupt our free air show.

Eventually he went off to exercise, which is good, because about two minutes after he left, four Blue Impulse planes flew over head. It was pretty cool to meet him and pretty cool to see the planes, too.