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.