Hello y'all!

We are safe and sound at Dylan's parents. Amazingly, in the week between us deciding to leave for sure/booking the ticket and us leaving Japan, we got everything wrapped up: apartment settled, bills paid, ourselves packed, appropriate things shipped here, and even had enough time to see friends and say goodbye.

Since we're back now, I'm thinking that my entries will stop for a while. At least until we get up to something remotely interesting. But, seeing as how we are who we are, that shouldn't take too long. Just so you know, don't be expecting much for the next couple of months.

And then we went to Beijing. Man, is that place intense! The entire population of Canada is 30 million people and, in Beijing alone, there are 17 million. Since we were only there for such a short period of time, we spent all of our time in the tourist sections of town. I doubt we got an authentic view of the city, but we definitely got our share of dealing with pullers/pushers. It seems like absolutely absolutely everyone was trying to sell us something. Turns out being white makes you an easy target. "Hello! Where are you going? Let's go!"

So, you know how Beijing hosted the Olympics last year? They have this huge section a couple of blocks big devoted to buildings they built for it. That has been sitting empty since. They used the Birds Nest for soccer sometimes, but for the most part, it is just there for tourist to come and take pictures of the pretty lights on the building. The roads are all still blocked off. Apparently, the plan is to convert some of the buildings into shopping centers. It completely breaks my brain to think of the millions of dollars that were spent, and now it sits there are a giant tourist trap.

Other than that, we went to the Great Wall. Aptly names, I might say. Went to the Forbidden City. Saw Tian'anmen Square. As I said, very touristy things, but quite neat. To be honest, I was thrilled most of the time. I have wanted to go to China for so long and it was crazy to actually get to be there.

All my bags are packed and I'm ready to go...

Well, not really. My bags will be packed soon, but I don't think that either Dylan or I are especially ready to go. For those of you who have not yet heard: Dylan and I are coming back to Canada.

After our epic two month battle with immigration and our even longer battle with the company Dylan worked for, our time in Japan is over for now. Immigration has turned us down for a work visa twice and, seeing as how Dylan hasn't been able to work for a while, we are quite low on money. So, without the time, money, energy, or morale to find Dylan another job, we are heading home.

There are a ton of reasons why this is probably for the best: we get to be home for Christmas, we get to see the people we love and have been missing for the last four months, we get to be home for the Olympics, I'll have more time to learn Japanese, it will be a chance for us to replenish our bank accounts, this whole trip will just serve as experience that will undoubtably help us when we decide to return to Japan (we're thinking 2011), etc, etc, etc. It doesn't mean that the last three-four months haven't been extremely hard on us and that we aren't incredibly sad to be leaving, to have failed at what we set out to do. Failed at something for apparently no other reason than incredible bad luck and timing - considering how many people have come, carried out the exact same steps we have and had everything work out swimmingly. It is difficult to not feel like no matter how much we love it here, Japan just doesn't feel the same way about us.

Anyways, Dylan and I fly out of Japan on the 11th to Beijing, have ourselves a consolation weekend there, and then fly into Vancouver on the 14th. Oddly enough, spending a weekend in China is cheaper than flying home directly from here (well, flying through China is cheaper, we just gave ourselves a LONG layover 'cause it would be sad to miss out on a chance to see the city to save the cost of a weekend at a hostel).

As sad as it is for us to be leaving, we're looking forward to seeing all of you. This trip has yet again showed us that we have some of the best friends and family that one could hope for and we love you guys.

My dear Clair has put me to shame with her super regular updating. Therefore, I decided to grace you all with a second update in a week! Woah. This one won't be nearly as epic.

So, yesterday we finally headed into Kok

ura to visit the castle (it was one of the first things I told Pauly that we'd be doing before she even came here). I was kinda worried, because I was excited to go since Dylan and I had walked around the outside before, but since it was closed we didn't go inside and as I kept going on and on about it to her, I kept hoping that it didn't turn out to be super lame. There has been a castle in that spot since the 1600s, but was burnt down in the 1800s. Blah, blah, useless filler so that it looks like I have more to talk about than I actually do. It was rebuilt in the 60s and fully restored in the 90s. Id est, not quite the same as the super old castles in Europe that people have co

me to expect when they hear the word castle. BUT, it turned out that the castle was super cool. They had all of these cool old samurai gear, a bunch of art of tigers (Since this is the year of the tiger! Go Bayside!), a whole bunch of interactive stuff (that made me happy and feel like a five year old - but a five year old who was having a lot of fun) like a game to see if you could properly set a tray of food to serve to someone, and a game to see it you could run faster than a mail currier (Dylan could, Pauly and I could not). Plus, the view out of the windows was amazing, and the gardens were beautiful with all of the trees changing colours. There was also a model of the castle made out of toothpicks. ~150, 000 toothpicks, actually.

Turns out, the word of this entry: SUPER. Isn't that super?

Today, we went down to the mall so Pauly could do some shopping. Randomly, on the way, we ran into Andy, who was on his way home from work and tagged along with us. And I bought a black sweat shirt that says "GOOD CHOICE" across my butt. In bright red, with a line of stars on top and below the words. But it's ok, everyone told me that

they didn't think it brought any attention to my bum. Why would they lie?

As a closing note, the other day Dylan bite my arm and left a tooth shaped bruises. Incidentally, today I read this comic:

I think it is a good representation of our relationship! It is now set as my desktop.

Visitations from afar.

Pauly just made fun of me for how long it takes me to write a entry. I maintain that it is just because of how much thought and love I put into them. That, or the fact that I'm indecisive and suck at writing anything.

Speaking of Pauly, that gal has been taking up almost 100% of our time since I last posted, so I guess I should tell y'all what we've been up ta (which is a little weird, since she is one of the only people who reads this).

Her first two day here, she desperately tried to avoid actually seeing us, so she had 2 out of 3 planes she took have massive delays. I'm pretty sure her trip took about twice as long as it should have. Plus side: she got to spend a night in a hotel in Tokyo and no problems with immigration (a rare thing in our lives)!

Once we actually saw her, we stored her bags (which had literally been bleeding maple sirup - O Canada!) at a train station, and hit the town. The town being Fukuoka, not Kitakyushu, since we don't get the chance to spend much time there anymore. We introduced her to one of our favourite Japanese restaurant experiences - Ichiran. Where you buy a ticket from a vending machine outside, go in and sit down, fill out a form, push a button, and, VOILA!, ramen appears in front of you from behind a curtain. Once our bellies were full, we went and visited Loft, my favourite shopping center. Then we decided that we should at least head in the general direction of our apartment. Dylan dropped off her bags while Paul and I went over to hang with Andrew. Dylan got there a little while later and we played us some Wii for a very, very long time. So long, in fact, that we missed the last train back to our place, so we crashed on his floor for the night (not a super comfy thing to do, since his apartment is not all that big). At this point, she has yet to even see our apartment, so once we woke up, we headed home and spent the day lounging.

Monday, we headed to the zoo! I was pretty excited about actually getting to go, and I spent quite a while singing my zoo song that I'd made up the time Dylan and I had tried to go, but had gotten there as it was closing. The zoo is actually more of a really big park that has a pony area and a kangaroo petting zoo. So, we wandered around for a while and then found out that the park has the most amazing playground! Us, being the grown ups we are, spent about an hour and a half playing. We then realized that if we didn't hurry up, the park would close before we actually got to see any animals, so we walked through their huge rose garden (makes Buchart Gardens look kinda lame) and made our way to the kangaroos! That was pretty super cool, since we got to walk around with all of these kangaroos hopping around us and go into their inclosure and pet them. Around this point, we realized that it was kinda weird that there were this many kangaroos (well over 100), since we were pretty sure that kangaroos only come from Australia, but they were crazy cute, so we didn't mind that too much. I went to pet one who decided that he didn't appreciate that too much, and he kinda charged at me and ran into me with his chest. The zoo lady was super apologetic and dragged the kangaroo in question off to the side, after which he decided to run around like a madman and get about 6 others going with him. It was quite entertaining. Wombats apparently aren't as friendly, so we just got to look at them from behind fences and netting. By this point, the zoo was closing, and we headed back in the general direction of our home (we are big on getting sidetracked). Once we got to the mall, we showed Pauly around the grocery store, I bought a sweater and she bought us some more dishes (yay cups!). We dropped our acquisitions off at the apartment and introduced her to Joyful, the Denny's of Japan, conveniently located across the street from us.

Tuesday, we did nothing.

Wednesday, we went bowling! with Andrew. We played five games. Oy. But it was five games for the price of three, so we really didn't have a choice. After that, we went and enjoyed ourselves some delicious all-you-can-eat shabu shabu. Mmm. Turns out we took a little too long and Andrew missed his last train home, so he crashed at our place. Which is no problem normally, since it is pretty standard for us all to crash at whatever home is closer, but he kinda had to work the next morning. Ooops.

Thursday, we did nothing. Oh, except we went and had ramen for lunch at a place across the street.

Friday, Andrew came over and we all played Settlers and cards. He crashed here again, and in the morning we all headed into Fukuoka since he had four tickets to the art museum there. Not much to say about the art musuem (which you are probably feeling pretty grateful for at this point), since it is one of those things that you have to be there for to find it even remotely interesting. Since we were in Fukuoka again, we decided to take Paul-Face to a delicious kushiage place that we had been to before. Super tired after all of this, so we came home and crashed.

Sunday, surprise surpise, we did nothing. Notice a trend (that kinda got screwed up with the whole art musuem)? Come on now, we aren't made of money here. Wait, we did laundry.

Which finally brings us to today. We got up and headed to Sarakura Mountain, which is about 30 mins. away by train, and boasts the third best night view in Japan. It was puuurdy. We walked up to the cable car, took it part of the way up (it costs more to take it all the way), and walked up to the top. Hung around for a while and came home (on the free shuttle to the train station that would have been real great to know about on the way there). Oh, and finally got to enjoy the kimchi that Dylan had made a few days ago (he REALLY enjoyed it when we were in Korea and decided that he could make it himself).

Tada! Congratulations on yet again making it to the end of a massive update. But I promised my dear Blair, so I decided to deliver. Maybe I should think about updating more regularly, so y'all don't have to read these novels once every few weeks.

The end.

So, for those of you who aren't already in the know, this past weekend Dylan and I took a non-optional trip to Korea in order to be able to stay in Japan. Apparently, you can only get a tourist visa that lasts 90 days, but you can leave the country for a day and get a new one when you come back (you can only do this once though, since you can only be in Japan on a tourist visa for 180 days of a year).

Anyway, I decided that I'd update you all on our trip while Dylan and a friend get started on an all night run-through of Mario Galaxy. That's right. But it's in Japanese, so they can justify it as studying. The friend just bought a Nintendo Wii today. It's black and pretty and Dylan is quite jealous.

Anywho, back to Korea. Friday night, we bordered a ship from the bottom of Honshu. We were quite panicky about making it to the boat on time, since Dylan was on the last day of his visa, but we got there plenty early. The boat itself was pretty cool, since it was an overnight trip and you slept in a room that you were assigned with slightly sketchy, really small futons with between 5-31 other people (I'm sure that the 1st and deluxe class accommodations were nicer). There were also various restaurants, a small shop with the essentials and a large sized common lounge. We met a group of three Japanese guys, two of whom were VERY good at english, and one who understood it well, but refused to speak it. We ended up staying up late with them chatting it up, including asking them for ideas of what we should do in Busan, Korea.

First thing in the morning, we got up and got off the boat. At the suggestion of our friends, we headed towards Busan tower, but wandered around a shopping district on the way. Here, we realized that Korea is much more American than Japan. There was Guess, Calvin Klein, American Apparel, Krispy Kream Donuts, Baskin Robins, as well as a thousand other American shops that I'm forgetting. Pretty much every store was American in this five block area. Seriously. After we had satisfied our amazement at this fact, we made our way to the tower. There isn't too much to say about it, other than it was a tower. It was tall and on a hill (of course), so it had a pretty rocking view. There were the typical tourist things, like a shrine, a dragon statue, and pretty, pretty flowers. One cool thing about it was that there was a museum of world instruments, which we hung around in for quite a while and played with all sorts of cool instruments. On our way down the hill, we noticed a handy escalator going up it. Or it would have been handy if we had noticed it on the way up, instead of walking up a butt-load of stairs.

After our tower fun, we decided to check out Dave's Fish & Chips restaurant. Dylan had read about online the day before while doing a brief search of things to do and it sounded interesting to go to an authentic English fish and chips place while in Korea (Dave was from Manchester). So, we had an adventure with the subway (seriously, who names the station at one end of the line Jangsan and the one at the other end Yangsan?) and went in search of Dave. Turns out, Dave abandoned us. We followed the two sets of directions we had, but Dave and his restaurant were nowhere to be found. By this point, we were quite hungry, so we decided to eat at the first place that looked kinda appealing. We found decent looking Korean restaurant and went for it; we walked in, sat down, and figured out that we were supposed to x-off what we wanted on an order form. A densely packed order form written completely in Korean. Ok. The lady working very helpfully came up to us and motioned that we were, in fact, supposed to x-off what we wanted and left. Hey, interesting fact about Dylan and I: we don't speak or read Korean. Luckily, a man roughly our age walked in and sat down beside us. We had been considering just x-ing things off at random, but decided that might not be a good idea and asked him, rather hopefully, if he spoke English. He made the universal sign of "a little" and off we went (the Korean "a little" english is A LOT more than the Japanese "a little")! We ended up with very delicious Kimchi and equally delicious Bibim (?). Once we were all fed, we headed for the beach to hang out for the remaining hour we had before we had to head back to the boat. Again, not much to say (I sometimes get the impression that I use brackets to often or in the completely wrong way; I'm going to try to not use them for the rest of this entry). It was a beach. Took the subway back no problem, and got onto the boat no problem.

Two of the guys from the trip over were also on our boat back, so we spent a few hours with them and their roommate for the night, Joshua the Australian. He actually made us feel better about ourselves, since he had spent the last three months couch surfing and was headed back to Japan with $20 that he was planning on stretching to last him until his flight home sometime in December. Anyway, morning came, we left the boat and safely made it back home-sweet-Japan no prob.

We decided to take a longer way home that took us through the walking tunnel that connected Honshu and Kyushu, but it turns out that it was closed for cleaning. This made me very, very sad. But on our way to the tunnel, we were walking along the route of a marathon, so we were entertained watching them run their little hearts out. Classical Japanese moment: one of the runners saw us, smiled real big, and said, "Good morning!" Seriously, he was more interested in the two foreigners walking by than the marathon he was in the middle of running. And, since we are in Japan, there was a free bus to take people from one side of the tunnel to the other, via the bridge. We hung around the water after we got off the bus, had some sketchy food, and made our way home.

General impressions from our trip:
-Korea is much better with the whole English thing, as already mentioned.
-A LOT more white people. Seriously, we saw at least 50 or so. This is probably correlated with the last point.
-Again, much more influenced by North America, all the way down to driving on the right side of the road and their sense of fashion.
-Busan is a crazy big city - about 10 times the size Victoria.

If you made it all the way to here, congratulations and I'm impressed and thankful that you care this much! I think I may tend to ramble or give more detail than necessary, but I figure this might be nice for those who are feeling especially Dylan and Tammy deprived.

At the request of our beautiful Alyssa, I decided to update for you all. Nothing mind blowing, mind you, just what we got up to this past weekend.

So, Saturday, Aoki-san and Yuko-san came up for Kitakyushu to visit us. We didn't really have any set plans, so they decided we should go and hangout in Mogiko, a cute little port city at the top of Kyushu, really close to Honshu. It actually reminded us a lot of Victoria - we even saw a busker! We wandered around the touristy walkway right mainly. We saw a man with a monkey dressed up in cloths on a leash. The monkey would bow and clap and basically be adorable. We had lunch at this fancy Chinese restaurant (apparently my culinary palate isn't that great, since I couldn't tell the difference between Chinese food in Japan and Japanese food in Japan). There was also this really tall building that we went up and got to take in the view of the city as well as across the water to Honshu. There is a really gorgeous bridge that connects the two islands, as well as a underground tunnel walkway thing that I'm determined to walk through, because how cool is that? Walking underground from one island to another! All in all, a pretty good day.

Sunday, we met up with a friend, Andy, and a couple of people he'd met, and went to a cultural festival at a local women's university. The girls running the stands seemed to think that three white people where the most exciting thing in the world, and even despite that, the festival was pretty loud and chaotic, in a good way though. A lot of really good food. It was raining though, so that kinda sucked and after a while we found out that a lot of the performances were happening on the other days of the festival. After we were done there, we went to a batting cage of all places at my darling husband's request. We hit some baseballs (and by we, I mean that they did, as I think I only hit maybe two balls), and then we called it a night, deciding not to go to this dance party thing we were invited to.

For those of you not in the know, Tuesday was a holiday here in little ol' Japan. So Monday night, Andy came over and we played Settlers into the wee hours of the morning. In the morning we got up and headed back to the festival to see if we could catch a few of the bands that we'd not gotten to see on Sunday. We ate some more delicious food (one stand that we ate from clapped when we came up to it because they were so excited about the white people eating from them), saw some good (and not so good) music. Andy took off after that, so Dylan and I wandered around the area for a couple of hours since the weather was so completely gorgeous that day.

So, a pretty mellow weekend, but really good.

Lazy Saturday.

Dylan and I are having a fairly boring day today.

So I though that while Dylan was busy playing on his computer, 

I'd give you a quick visual update of our lives... 

No, that was a lie. I'm just posting a few pictures to show Pauly the results of me playing with henna. That was the more impressive picture.

This one was just me, well, drawing stars.

 

And, as a final treat:

...me after I fell in the gutter.

Ok, I'm now confident I made that as non-sensical and pointless as possible. Mission accomplished for the day.

Oh, I guess I haven't been updating a lot lately. Time flies when you have no internet connection. Speaking of which, for those of you who don't know, I did find a wireless connection at the corner of our balcony. It is not always reliable and it means that my laptop spends most of it's day outside, persistently downloading things for me. But it is better than nothing. Dylan has a system worked out for his desktop where he hangs a USB wireless thing out the window with an extension cord. We are crafty like that.

In other news, we have been doing our best to make some friends here in big ol' Kitakyushu. Dylan ran into another ALT at the local deptartment store type thing (think Walmart) a couple of weeks back and we've hung out a few times and he's introduced us to the friends he has made. Not that there is anything wrong with talking to Dylan, but it is nice to have some other human communication sometime.

As for actual adventures, we have been fairly boring lately. Mostly just going to random restaurants in Kitakyushu with the guy Dylan met. But this past weekend, Dylan and I did try to go to the zoo. It is fairly close by - only one train stop, followed by a forty minute walk. That being said, it seems a lot further away when you get there at about 10 to five and find out that the zoo is closing at five. But, Dylan and I are not faint of heart - we creeped around the parameter of the zoo for a while, peering in and saw some kangaroos. Then we took a nice walk around the big lake right by the zoo. But it was a lake in Japan!

Like I said, fairly boring. Yesterday, I did laundry!

So, I wrote this a couple of days ago and am most likely currently crouching on the sidewalk outside of some poor person's house, stealing their unsecured wireless (thank you random stranger!). That is how much I love you guys.

We made our big move to Kitakyushu this past week. And thanks to a lot of really nice people, it all worked out and neither us nor our stuff were homeless for the weekend! We packed up and left our old place on Friday, and since there had to be an OWLS person there for the inspection of our apartment, we loaded up her car and she gave us a ride from Yanagawa to the OWLS headquarters in Kitakyushu (which is really lucky, since it is about a two and a half hour drive). Dylan had a afternoon of training, meetings, and whatnot, then we left most of our stuff at OWLS, and headed to Dylan's old host-mom's (or Aoki-Hotel as she jokingly calls it) for the Friday night through to Sunday. On Sunday, we headed back up to OWLS where we met up with Lee (a big important guy at OWLS whose actual job I don't know) who happened to have a meeting that day and agreed to go completely out of his way to give us and our stuff a ride to our apartment (with the addition of the rice maker, and our kitchen stuff, the two of us can no longer carry all our stuff in one trip, so that kinda ruled out taking the train).

For those of you who are curious (read: dad), Kitakyushu is a port city at the top of the island of Kyushu. It has a sort of bad reputation for being "dirty" since it is a very industrial city. Lot of factories and shipyards - kind of like that ugly part of Vancouver that you pass between the ferries and downtown, but a whole city's worth. According to Dylan, the first environmental protests in Japan took place here, in part led by the housewives who were upset that all of the laundry they hung out to dry was getting dirty from the pollution. Lately the city has been making a real effort to change that and just last year won some big important award for environmental awareness or something. That being said, we live in a more rural part of the city, so it is somewhat less ugly here - we have a view of some lovely mountains behind all of the smokestacks. We can also see Honshu off in the distance if we know where we are supposed to be looking (half of we has an eerie ability to always know where we are and the other half gets lost as soon as we turn a corner), and are at the part of Japan closest to Korea - I don't know if that means that we can see it at all, but you know.... For those interested in a somewhat more historical background (read: dad), Kitakyushu is also known as being lucky since it was originally the target for one of the atomic bombs due to it's large port. But it happened to be cloudy that day, so the bomb ended up going to Nagasaki instead. Which, let me tell you, is a chilling thought to have while living here.

Our apartment is lovely. It is bigger than any of the places we had looked at, but it also comes with a bigger price tag than we had hoped for. Let me tell you, between deposits, fees, and key money, I'm surprised anyone ever moves out of their parents' house in Japan! But I guess it works at making sure people moving into your building are going to stay there a while. We have a decent size kitchen/dining room (for Japan) that we have bought a gas range for and are going to buy a small fridge for probably today (our perishables are currently sitting on the balcony), a really nice bathroom, one room with regular floors and another room with tatami mats, which Dylan loves. It is on the second floor of a three story building. All in all, I'm happy, our bank account isn't. We are slowly getting settled. We've bought some lamps, a couple futons, some kneeling pads and a "chair" and have found the neighbourhood laundromat. Other than that, we have vague plans to a few luxuries such as curtains and a table or two, probably for once Dylan's gotten his November pay cheque. Oh, and the name of our building: Maison Clair. Yet another reason for Clair to come here...we're already roomies!

With the exception of Dylan waiting a little too long to contact the water company and them shutting of our water for an afternoon, we have most other things in order. Water, gas and electricity are taken care of. Dylan should be in the processes of changing his address on his alien registration card and then setting up a bank account as I write this. Which is good, since it turns out you need a Japanese bank account for a lot! Including getting the internet, getting paid, and making your apartment building owners happy. Now, before you think we are insanely impressive getting all of this stuff done, Dylan's OWLS people have been really helpful and taken care of a lot of this themselves or at least walked Dylan through it. I love them.

Last, but not least, apparently there was a hurricane that downgraded to a typhoon that passed over the tip of an island to the east of us yesterday. I don't know how that island faired (hopefully it wasn't too bad), but it was mighty windy here over night! Still is, for that matter. Nothing remotely dangerous for us, but I love storms, so I thought it was pretty cool.

My birthday trip!

So the rest of silver week wasn't that exciting for us here, except that we went into Omuta (the large-ish city to the south of us) on Wednesday to have dinner for my birthday. We chose a restaurant named Jamaica. They served pizza, hamburgers and various japanese dishes. Jamaica. We had a delicious curry pizza. It was pretty much curry sauce with carrot and broccoli, etc. put on pizza with some cheese thrown on.

But then this weekend, we rented a car and went on an adventure to Yufuin! It is kinda like the Banff of Kyushu.

First part of the adventure: renting the car! I'd like to point out that in Canada, we won't be able to rent a car for about 2 years. Here, it was no problem. Also, most of the driving took place on the expressway, which would have been terrifying enough for Dylan who was still a little uncomfy driving on the left side of the road. But to make things interesting, no one is Japan even remotely follows the posted speed limits on the expressway. On the way there, the limit was 50 kph and most people were happily going along at about 90-100 kph. I think me panicking and yelling at Dylan helped the situation! On the way back, since it was later in the day and speed limits go up on some roads at night, the speed limit was 80 kph and we drove at about 120-130 kph most of the way and were going just slightly faster than most of the cars in the slow lane, but kinda slower than most in the fast lane.

We got into Yufuin at around 1pm or so, and promptly decided to take a nap in the car. Once we woke up, we wandered around this lake and downtown Yufuin for a bit and went and had lunch around 3pm. Then we decided that we should it up the hot springs before they all closed. And this being Japan - hot springs just mean baths in water that you don't have to heat yourself! Meaning more nakedness! But this time it was fine. After convincing Dylan that I really didn't want to go to a segregated bath house because it would be really boring for me to sit there being stared, he asked around and we found this nearby bathhouse that had a family bath. More importantly, after some confusion, we found out it had private family baths. Meaning that we rented out a room and didn't have to be naked in front of other people. It was lovely. I strongly believe that that is how every hot spring should be and that every house should have one, or at least my future house. After that, we went and had diner and headed back to our bed (read: car) for the night.

The next day, we woke up and started our trek up Yufudaka. Interesting facts about Yufudaka: it was a volcano, it is about 5 times the size of Mt. Finlayson, walking up it is VERY tiring, and it has screaming deer on it. Oh, and climbing up near the top is terrifying since it is really steep, really windy and has chains that you need to hold on to so that you don't plummet to your death. But we made it up (after I lost more or less my body weight in sweat) and it was pretty. By the time we got down, it was time to head home. We got back filled up the car, returned it, and come home. All in all, a pretty good trip!

The End.

Our weekend thus far.

So, as you might know, this is a suuuupppperrr long weekend for us here in Japan. Monday was/is Respect-for-the-Aged Day, Wednesday is the Autumnal Equinox, and Tuesday is a holiday simply because it falls right in between two other holidays, thank you Holiday Act of Japan! What have we been up to, you may ask?

Well, Friday we went down to a festival held each year at Hakozaki Shrine. It had roughly 700 stalls with various foods and traditional japanese festival games. Both my favourite and least favourite ones were the ones where they give you a really delicate net and you try and catch as many of some sort of an animal (they have ones for gold fish, beetles, and baby turtles) as you can and then you get to keep whatever you catch. You take it home as a pet. Weird. Anyway, we wondered around these stalls looking at all sorts of neat things for a few hours. And we went into the shrine, which was amazing. There were all of these traditional performances (?) or prayer (?) or something, that were pretty neat. And we did the whole practice of washing our hands and mouths, and going in to pray at the shrine with all of this clapping and bowing. But it was just so fascinating to see how religion plays a role in Japanese life. Everyone enters into the shrine and prays - everyone. My favourite was this really cool looking guy, about 25 years old, praying with a beer in one hand. Because when you go to the festival, you pray - it is just what you do.

Saturday, we went into downtown Fukuoka and met up with Aoki-san and Yuuko-san for lunch at this delicious all-you-can-eat buffet and wandered around window-shopping. While we were doing this, Dylan mentioned that we were planning a trip to a hot spring next weekend and were going to rent a car. They worry, so they took us to a travel agency to see if maybe we could find a cheaper train/hotel deal so that we wouldn't have to drive. But Dylan proved to be right in that it was a lot cheaper to rent a car, so he actually won that one with them. However, they drive on the other side of the road here, so Aoki-san decided that the only way that she would let us rent a car was if she took Dylan out to practice first. And since we were coming back into town the next day, it made the most sense for us to stay with her for the night, since she lives so much closer and so that Dylan could get the most practice possible. She won that one. So we went out, bought a change of clothing and and spent the night at her house.

Oh, darn, actually, on the way back to her house, it was decided that we should go to the giant ferris wheel in Meinohoma since Dylan had mentioned that he wanted to take me there sometime during the weekend for my birthday and it was on the way. I'm not sure why Dylan wanted to take me there, since I'm scared of heights and this freaking ferris wheel is 120m tall and is tied as the fourth largest ferris wheel in the world. But the weather on Saturday was kinda lousy, so it was closed due to wind and the four of us went on the smaller (and by smaller, I mean about half as big, but still the largest ferris wheel I'd ever been on by far). It was scary, but really pretty. It had a lovely view of the wedding theme park that was nearby!

Which brings us to Sunday. We woke up, headed over to Yuuko-san's to say goodbye and then headed out so Dylan could get some practice in. We went for a really pretty drive along the coast, saw this CRAZY big motorcycle groups (seriously, there were at least 100 of them), stopped and dipped out toes in the ocean, went to this hippie/surfer art gallery, and then she decided we should stop for a snack. So she took us to this golf club that overlooks the coast. As you can imagine, golfing in Japan is for the very rich, since golf courses kinda take up a lot of room. It was ridiculously fancy and they made me take off my flip flops and put on slippers, which was kinda embarrassing. Our snacks (of juice, edamame, and gyoza) cost her about $30, which we felt pretty guilty for, but she wouldn't let us pay and it was her idea to go there in the first place.... Then we continued on driving for a while, stopped for ice cream at Baskin Robins (where they put Alyssa's ice cream scooping to shame! Seriously, these were the most perfectly round scoops of ice cream I have ever seen) and she dropped us off to meet up with Samantha and her boyfriend, Jake. Wow, this paragraph is getting long.

Time for a new one. Samantha, Jake Dylan and I met up at the school and wandered down to Canal City, this huge shopping mall thing and had ramen for dinner from this ramen food court where each restaurant served ramen from a different region. We then decided to have desert, so we wandered down to another part of the mall and watched the hourly water show on the way. Hourly water show. It was set to Abba and Dylan took a video that we'll eventually get around to posting on Facebook. In another part of the mall, they had this fountain that had this sheet of water droplets falling that would have gaps in it that would spell things. We also stopped at a pet store, but decided not to buy the ¥30,000 bunny since we thought communication would be difficult, it only speaking Japanese and all. ¥30,000, seriously, for a bunny. For desert Dylan had a strawberry/banana/chocolate crepe and I had a bubble tea float. We finished up and headed home.

Monday, we met up with Samantha and Jake again. We had told them they day before about the ferris wheel and they'd been interested, so we'd decided to head there to go shopping, have lunch, and go on this freaking wheel. We headed down, and I WENT ON THE FERRIS WHEEL!! Yay me. It wasn't actually that bad, since I'm just a big wuss. We then had some food, walked around for a while, and headed back into downtown Fukuoka (which is called Teinjin and will make this easier if I just refer to it as that...). Samantha and Jake went home, but it was still early, so Dylan and I decided to wander around for a while. Dylan bought a book, I bought some socks and leggings, and Dylan bought a shoulder bag. In that order.

And that, my friends, was our adventuring from the last couple of days. Today, I decided that it would be best if I hung around home, did laundry, and got caught up on things. I hope that was epic enough of an update for you, Pauly.

I made a new friend today. Her name is Samantha. I go to school with her.

The end.

I was getting really frustrated this morning that everything was such a mess and that there was nothing I could do about it, and then I realized today that I've been living out of a suitcase since the end of July. I would just really like someplace that we were going to be staying long enough to unpack, long enough that it makes sense to buy things that would make it possible to unpack. Because right now, every time we buy something, I think of how full our bags are and wonder where we are going to fit it.

That's my story for today. I gotta go to school now.

School

So school yesterday was confusing as heck. I thought I was screwed and was super disheartened about this whole Japanese thing. But, so far today has gone a lot better! Even with her still primarily speaking a language I don't yet know. I think the trick is in reading the lesson before hand, so that I can focus on what she is saying without worrying about missing important things. If that makes sense. Anyway, I've been reheartened.

Oh, and if this makes no sense or there are horrible spelling mistakes, it's because I'm writting this on my iPod while on my lunch break.

Anyway, people are back from buying lunch, so I should stop being rude.

P.S. If learning Japanese isn't hard enough, most of the people in my class speak French, so I'm trying to understand and participate with them during breaks. Good times.

Nakedness

So this weekend, Dylan and I went into the city both days. Saturday was kinda boring. He showed me where the school was (today was my first day and was really really hard - as in they are trying to teach me Japanese in Japanese), we had dinner, we walked around, and we were going to go to this international bar, but they were really slow and the train we needed to catch left pretty early. So we just went home.

Ahh, but then Sunday. Sunday, we went up to Susenji (about 1.5 hours away by train from Yanagawa, where our apartment is) and met up with Aoki-san, her new billet, and her friend, Yuko-san. We went to Yuko-san's house (which was really cute) and she gave us some drinks and snacks, and then she gave Dylan and I some adorable bowls she had bought us. They go well with the hand towels she gave us earlier and the chopsticks and bath towels Aoki-san gave us earlier. I will post pictures of them next time. When we were done, we all left for the bath. This is the part of the story where I'm naked in front of a whole bunch of people, including Dylan's previous host mom and her friend. So, you go in, get naked, shower, and then walk around going into whichever bath suits your fancy for a while, shower again and leave. It was kinda weird, but not as awkward as you might expect since everyone is naked. Surprisingly relaxing. It is more or less like sitting in a hot tub (or a variety of hot tubs - both outside and inside), except you're not in a bathing suit. You do get a towel that you can cover yourself with when walking between tubs. Actually, I think I would have found it less awkward if it had been co-ed. Then I could have talked to Dylan and had him translate things for me. Silly Christians coming and telling them it was a sin for large numbers of men and women to be naked together. There are apparently still some that are co-ed, but they are more rare. 

After the bath, we all went out tempura - which Yuko-san paid for. And we went shopping for work shirts and ties for Dylan, as well as a pot, a pan and some cooking utensils. We also briefly looked at rice cookers, but decided they were too expensive. After we finished up, they gave us a two second ride to the bus depot and gave us the rice cooker they had bought us as a present. Apparently they worry. Have I mentioned that they are absolutely adorable?

First day in Japan!

The way over was pretty rough. Long and boring and by myself. Lots of time to think of how potentially disastrous this could all be. And then the Japanese immigration was less than keen on letting me into the country seeing as how I didn't know an address or phone number for where I was staying. And then the guy tried to tell me that Dylan wasn't in Japan. (All of this is happening in Japan, not somewhere useful like Vancouver, by the way.) But then I went and talked with the senior immigration inspector, she went away for a couple of minutes and handed my my visitor's visa. I liked her. 

Now Dylan has gone off to work and I'm sitting here with his host mom downstairs. Her english: very poor. My Japanese: very poor. Good times. 

Ok, I know that it is kinda lame to update my Asia blog so many times while I'm still in Canada...

This is the last time, I swear.

In the middle of packing. Would have been further along if I hadn't of switched suitcases about 30 mins ago; I needed more room. I had to cut back on books - it made me sad, but we kinda need clothes. Just doing laundry and then I'll be done (take that Dylan!). Kinda sleepy.

T minus 3 hours. Goodbye Canada. Try to stay out of trouble while I'm away! 

Oh crap oh crap oh crap...

I land in Tokyo on Sept 2. Meaning I leave Victoria on the Sept. 1. Which means that all of my plans have to get squished in a little tighter! Damn. Good thing I checked. 

DAMN.

Ok, that will just make things a little more interesting.

So, in my never ending (and always failing) attempt to be better than Dylan in every way, I decided to set up a blog before I leave. Instead of already having been there for weeks and still showing no sign of wanting to share with people what I'm up to. 

Things I have already done for the trip:

-bought backpack and travel books

-bought travel insurance

-had going away dinner with family

In the process of:

-getting immunized 

-settling things up with employers

-saying goodbye to people

-adjusting to Japan time thanks to Skype and Dylan...

Things left to do:

-figure out what to pack

-get list from Dylan of what he wants me to pack

-PACK

-trivial little things like cut and dye hair