It was gunfire that Nikola Stula thought he heard the first night he arrived in Gifu.

It was a sound he knew well. His memories were still fresh of the three-month war in 1998, when every evening the blast of the air-raid sirens was followed by gunfire that rattled the windows in his parents' home in Belgrade.

Looking out at the night sky that first evening in Gifu, Stula realized there were no gunshots, only the illumination of fireworks above the Nagara River that flowed down from the mountains. He returned to his futon secure in the knowledge that he was beginning a new life in a new land.