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.