Just call me Travel Agent Bobbi!

Asia ~ Japan ~ Fukuoka & Beppu

Once again, blogs have been few and far between, whoops. It’s been a month of accomplishments with my Japanese – I can now do many things in Japanese that I never before had the ability or courage to do: order pizza delivery over the phone, direct a taxi driver to my apartment, make travel arrangements with a travel agent and more. Most of these things are activities I never even had the opportunity to do in English, in Australia – I live in the sticks, so getting a taxi home, or getting pizza delivered has never been an option. I’m finally beginning to really function over here!

Gyoza at the gyoza restaurant in Hakata

My friend Jen from home has been visiting me for the past two weeks, and it’s been a blast. I’ve taken her around to do plenty of things around Kyushu, including clubbing in Fukuoka (stumbling home at 7am after spending all night at “Happy Cock”, all you can drink for 2000 yen, who can go past that?!), horse races in Saga (where you go not to watch the races in Saga, but to bet on the races in Kyoto!), temples in Dazaifu (students are starting to cram, the temple was packed!), a home party drinking cocktails and eating oden in Kurume (and laughing the night away with crazy cousins!), bali style onsens in Chikushi (Jen’s first onsen!), sand onsens, hostels and “hell valley” in Beppu (natural bubbling colourful pits of sulphur water, reminiscent of what hell may look like), souvenir shopping at the many 100-yen shops in Fukuoka (and then finding a post office that will accept the 100-odd kg of souvenirs that Jen bought!) and shopping and watching movies at Canal City in Fukuoka (New Moon has FINALLY come out in Japan!).

Students tying their fortunes up at Dazaifu

Matt’s headed off on his next adventure – he is now in Taiwan looking for a job, leaving me in Japan all on my own… Never fear, with my newfound pizza (and sushi, curry, hotpot, Korean, Indian etc etc) ordering abilities, I think I should survive. Throw in the attention of my host sister and cousin (I have an accessible apartment in the city, a big bonus on a Saturday night when trains stop at 11:30pm! This Saturday night is the first I haven’t been out till 7am, and it was only because Jen was leaving early Sunday that I was excused!) and my other Japanese friends.

At the Moomin cafe in canal city. If you're lucky, Mr Moomin himself will come and sit at your table to help you drink your gingerbread hot chocolate (which is easily the best hot chocolate I've ever had, and so it should be at $8 a cup).

Now it’s back to work, sorting out my parents itinerary for when they rock up in two weeks time. We’ll be hiring a car (eek!) and traveling a bit of Kyushu before heading to Kyoto & Osaka for a couple a days, and then heading to China on the ferry. Just call me Travel Agent Bobbi!

Settling down

Asia ~ Japan ~ Fukuoka & Kurume

… and so it is that I am now renting my very first apartment, all by myself. Well, kinda.

Matt and I arrived in Fukuoka with our first two nights of accommodation booked, with the intention of finding an apartment straight away, or at the very least a cheaper hotel (Osaka was full of them, couldn’t be that hard, right?). Wrong! Fukuoka does not have cheap business hotels, the hotel we had found was the cheapest there was (and it was still a fair bit more than the hotels in Osaka). We spent our fist couple of days wandering around, determined to stumble upon a cheap hotel. In reality all we achieved was an amazing number of blisters and a thorough understanding of the backstreets of Fukuoka city. We quickly realised we needed to book a few more nights at our current hotel, but were only able to book 1 more night – the next night was the beginning of Obon. “Ahh, it’s ok, we’ll just have to pay a bit more at another hotel”, we thought. Wrong! The whole town was booked out.

Fukuoka's manmade beach

Ikeda’s to the rescue! Luckily for us, my host family from Kurume was more than willing to put us up, and so we headed out to Kurume. Whilst in Kurume, we were fed the most delicious foods by my host mum and my host sister Sawako helped us in our search for an apartment. She took us back into the city, to a company that rents furnished apartments by the month (not a common practice here), and helped us sort out an apartment. Our apartment finder was Chinese, so between the limited English, Chinese and Japanese, we all communicated, and we now have a place to live.

Octopus for sale at the supermarket

After the apartment searching was done, we have a few days to lap it up at the Ikeda’s before venturing out on our own. As it is so incredibly hot over here (not so much hot, but humid), we haven’t really been stirring before dark. But after dark I took Matt out for bike rides around town, showing him all the places I used to hang out as an innocent 15 year old exchange student. A lot of the places are still there, but the town itself has changed considerably – the biggest change would have been “Ichi-Ban-Gai”, the main shopping strip – a new super mall has opened up on the outskirts of town, and as a result Ichi-Ban-Gai is all but dead, empty shops and not too many people about. Wednesday came about, bringing with it the opportunity to join Naoko’s calligraphy class with some of the ALT’s (foreign Assistant Language Teachers) from Kurume. As usual I started out with good intentions of what to write, by the end both Matt and I were drawing pretty little pictures with our calligraphy brushes.

Having dinner with Chris, an ALT from my time

On Thursday we headed to Kitakyushu to where Sawako is living, to see the fireworks festival. The festival has been going for quite a few years, and involves fireworks going off from either side of the bay. The fireworks themselves were deemed “short” by my host dad – they only went for 1.5 hours! After the fireworks, we headed back to an izakaya – a small hole in the wall bar – to chat to the bar tender about potential jobs in the area. Not many available it would appear…

Little girl watching the hanabi in her yukata

Sawako helped us move into our new apartments on Sunday. As the girl, I got the “safer” upstairs apartment – I’m not sure I got the better deal, the stairs are a killer, really. Must not drink and then attempt those stairs, could be disastrous. The apartment itself is great – small but contains everything I need. I even have a loft! Comes complete with free internet and cable TV – problem is you can’t use both at the same time – I’m working hard on that one.

The main room in my apartment

Since moving in, we have been exploring the area. We both have bikes (I inherited mine from an ALT who recently left Kurume, Matt has rehomed an abandoned bike from a previous tenant of our apartments) and have been using them non-stop. We are only about a 10min ride to Hakata, the main station in Fukuoka, and about a 15min to Tenjin, the other main station in Fukuoka. Great fun, but must be done after dark (due to the extremely strong sun and my lack of sunscreen). 100 yen shops are featuring alot in our travels (have basically furnished the apartment entirely from the high quality $2 shops). Next step – JOBS!

Take care all. I’m now here till at least Christmas – feel like visiting?

Are the gods out to get me?

Asia ~ Japan ~ Kyushu ~ Kurume, Beppu & Kagoshima and Asia ~ Japan ~ Koyasan

Everyday over here seems to present new challenging situations, and yet each day also seems to present unbelievable experiences.

After leaving Hokkaido, I traveled down south to Kyushu via Osaka. Due to the entire country being on the move (and despite the fact that I booked my tickets two weeks in advance), I was unable to secure seats on a fast shinkansen. Instead, I went on the “SuperExpress Shinkansen” that stopped at all stations to Kurume. Sheesh. In Kurume I once again met up with previous host families and had a fantastic time. Our days were spent lazying about in the air conditioning (unbelievably hot down here in Kyushu) and going out for dinner. My first night out was at the local Chinese restaurant, where the owner still remembered me! Second night out was at a yakitori (grilled foods) restaurant. Plenty of (ice cold) beer to be had, fun times had by all. As always, leaving was difficult (sob!), but I’ll be back soon…

From Kurume I headed to Beppu. However, due to a problem with buying my rail pass in Kurume, I first had top head to the bigger city of Fukuoka to take care of my rail pass. As I’m flying out of there in 5 days time, I thought I would leave my big backpack in a coin locker there, and just cart around my small bag. So off I went to the coin locker place, and asked the guy how long you can leave a bag there, was 5 days ok? He said it was fine, so I put the bag in a locker (had to struggle to make it fit, I wasn’t going to pay the extra $1 to get a bigger locker!). The way it works is you pay the first day when you deposit the bag, then you pay whats owing when you come and get your luggage. So I paid for the first day. I then went all chatted to the girls at the information desk, and they then told me that its a max of three days for the lockers – after that they make you pay heaps of money to get your bag back. Bah! I had to go back and get my bag, and take it with me to the next place. Put it in a locker at the station when I got here, so I didn’t have to lug it to my accommodation, but still had to get it in and off the trains, very annoying!

Kagoshima

In Beppu, the capital of hot springs in Japan, I spent my first day wandering around, attempting to keep out of the sun. While strolling down the main street, I noticed an ATM that would accept my card, and thought I may as well get some money out as backup. Big mistake – half an hour later, after many “discussions” with the guys at the bank, my credit card had been frozen, and it appeared they had $500 of my money. The rest of the night was spent on internet chat to Australia trying to sort it out. Appears to be sorted out now, but was not fun! Whilst in Beppu, I also went to a hot sand bath (in an attempt to relax after the credit card dramas). Amazing! You put on a cotton yukata (summer kimono), and then lie down in the hot black sand whilst they shovel hot sand over your body. The feeling is amazing. Afterwards, you wash yourself off and soak in a big onsen bath. My second night was spent in fear – put a bunch of drunk foreigners together with a big bag of fireworks, and what do you think is going to happen? We’re just lucky that the rain dealt with most of the blow from the crackers.

Fireworks in Beppu

From Beppu it was down to Kagoshima, one of the most south points (other than the islands) that you can go in Japan. My first day was spent in agony – the trip was 6 hours of changing trains, and as it is the Obon holiday, tickets were sold out in most carriages. As a result, I ended up in a smoking carriage – couple that with the 3 hours of sleep I had the night before, and the copious amounts of Japanese sake and shochu I drank the night before (FREE, it was free!), I was a sorry sight by the time I made it to Kagoshima. Luckily I had the foresight to book a hotel rather than a hostel, and spent a good majority of my time asleep in my hotel room…

My last night in Japan was spent at a buddhist temple – an unbelievable experience. After checkin, I wandered about the neighbouring mossy antique cemetery – with an estimated 500,000 graves. Dinner was at 5.30pm, with an 8pm lights out! With a wake-up bell at 5.30am, the early bedtime was just as well. The next day was spent traveling to get back to the airport (with a few pre-planned stops for souvineer shopping 🙂 ).

Once again, my travels in Japan are over, but have no fear, I’ll be back again!

Sun setting on my holiday

Bitten by a block of chocolate

Asia ~ Japan ~ Fukuoka ~ Kurume, Saga, Yame & Yufuin

Well, life back in Kurume is both fun and natsukashii – reminiscent of the past. I’ve spent the past 1 and a half weeks living with my first Japanese host family, and it’s been great, meeting friends from the past and catching up with everyone. Arrival in Kurume was great – I caught the train down to Kurume, and a taxi to Naoko’s house. In the taxi, I was actually able to communicate with the driver and give him directions – something I’m not yet able to do in China – a very satisfying experience. First night at Naoko’s was spent at the local Chinese restaurant, catching up with everyone and having a delicious dinner of Japanese Chinese food (much better than Australian Chinese food!).

Since then, I’ve been taken around to see the many sights of the area by a good many friends. We went to Yanagawa to do a boat cruise on the canals and had an amazing 60 year old man as our navigator/driver/entertainer. He sung songs (often with my name in them) and continually made jokes, of which I understood about half (his accent/use of slang was extremely strong). He even had me up on deck steering the boat… The boat itself was unique – it was steered and propelled by the driver at the back with a long stick (no motor here) and had a table in the middle which we sat around. The table had a blanket over the top, under which we stuck our legs. Under the table were big pots of hot coals, which kept the boat (and our legs) nice and warm. After our cruise we sat down for a lunch of eel and rice – yum! I also went to Saga with the Yoshida’s, to go to the local onsen – Japanese hot spring bath – a fantastic treat on a cold winters day.

Directing the boat where to go...

Exploring Kurume has been fun and kind of sad – everything is changing dramatically. All the shops around where I used to hang out every day after school are closed – they have moved to the new shopping center that is out of town… Back at my old high school was interesting – I met up with my old homeroom teacher and English teacher, and met the two current ALTs (American English teachers). My old homeroom teacher had me go to his class and introduce myself in English (they are 3rd year students – grade 12 – studying English)… I gave a quick introduction – my name, age, what I’m studying etc and asked if they had any questions. Only one, from a loud boy in the front – ‘are you married?!’ (in Japanese). To which I replied, also in Japanese, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand Japanese, if you ask in English I might be able to answer’… No response!

My old highschool, Kurume Koutou Gakkou

I visited with the Hashizume family and went up to Kiyomizu to see the temple (imagine all the steps you’ve ever seen in your life, then double it)… and afterwards we went to a sushi ‘train’ restaurant to grab lunch – YUM. Dinner was again raw fish – this time at a favourite restaurant of Naoko & Hirosuke, with friends of theirs. The difference being that the raw fish I tried that night was fugu – the deadly pufferfish. And it was delicious (we also had it served as fried fish). Yesterday and this morning was spent at the Onsen resort in Yufuin – a fantastic place that we had all to ourselves – my belief is because it was so damn cold. But the hot baths were fantastic, and the dinner incredible. After dinner Naoko and I relaxed in my room and polished off a bottle of Australian chardonnay, a perfect end to my Japanese part of the trip.

Well, now I’m getting ready to head back to China – tomorrow I’ll be on a ferry to Qingdao – from there I’ll head up to Beijing to spend a bit of time shopping (and freezing my butt off!).

Naoko, Hirosuke & I, standing by Yufu Mountain in Yufuin

Take care all

xo bobbi

p.s. watch out for the deadly swiss chocolate – it nearly snapped my finger in half when i tried to break a piece off – now i have an awesome bruise under my nail – why does this type of thing only happen to me?!