This week I was very excited to have Mike come and visit me! I had work, but we still managed to get out and do a lot of things!
Mike arrived in Fukuoka Airport on Monday, November 4th around 10 P.M. I left Kitakyushu after dinner to meet him at the airport. He’d been on two planes traveling for almost eighteen hours, but we still had to take the subway to Hakata station and then a train back to Kitakyushu. We got back to my apartment a little after midnight and almost immediately fell asleep.
On Tuesday my school had the day off as a substitution day for Saturday, when I went to school during culture festival, so I took Mike around the city. We started by walking along the monorail to Kokura station, then walked though Uemachi (an arcade next to Kokura station with many shops, restaurants, and game stations) to get to Kokura Castle and Riverwalk. We had lunch at Riverwalk and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Riverwalk and Uemachi. We had dinner at Booties with Caol and Patrick where Mike triedふぐ (fugu, puffer fish) for the first time.
Wednesday I
had work, but it was a BoE meeting day. On meeting days I leave work early to
head over to my Board of Education in Kitakyushu. Since last week I was at
Shinozaki (my closer school), I had enough time to meet Mike for lunch before
heading to my meeting. I was really excited about this meeting because we
finally got our business cards! After the meeting I met back up with Mike and
we went to Habit, a burger place many of us go after our BoE meetings. We were
joined by Patrick, Leah, and Juha at the restaurant and afterwards went back to
Juha’s apartment to play board games.
Thursday I was at work again, but Mike had some fun exploring Kokura a little more. He went to Cha Cha Town (so named because the Kitakyushu accent often puts “cha” at the end of sentences) and had sushi for lunch. He also went to Aru Aru City, a big mall behind Kokura station designated to everything anime. After work, Mike and I rode the monorail to Kokura station. I needed to meet Patrick to finalize our trip to Tokyo for Christmas and Mike wanted to look at all the stalls set up in the station selling lots of different food and even some clothes and jewelry. Going to the travel agency with Patrick didn’t take long, so Mike and I met up with Juha and Kyoko at 鉄なべ (tetsunabe), one of my favorite restaurants in Kitakyushu.
Friday, again I had work. Mike said he didn’t go out much, I think he slept most of the day since he didn’t get much of a chance to sleep off his jet lag when he first arrived. He did go out to Tanga market. Tanga market is a street full of fish shops one stop down on the monorail (or about a fifteen minute walk) from my apartment. Mike got some delicious たこ焼 (takoyaki, fried octopus) there for lunch. He also brought some fish and vegetables home, which we made for dinner when I got home from work.
Friday night
we went out since Mike had never seen the Kokura nightlife before. We met Leah
and Caol for drinks, then we all headed to karaoke. Leah and Caol went home
after karaoke, but my friend Vixay was DJing at Orange Door for the night and I
had said we’d stop by to see him. At Orange Door, Mike and I ran into Juha and
Kyoko who were also there to see Vixay. We sat with Juha and Kyoko for a while
before heading home.
Saturday we had a very quiet day. We mostly stayed in and played games. We did treat ourselves to a fancy dinner at a restaurant Juha had suggested the night before. I’m not sure of the name (Juha didn’t know the name either, just gave us vague directions), but it was a very nice焼肉 (yakiniku) restaurant. Yakiniku is kind of like BBQ, you get various meats, seafood, and vegetables that you grill at your table. The place we went was small, but the food was incredible!
Sunday we
ventured outside of Kitakyushu. We first went up to Shimonoseki for its famous
Karato Ichiba fish market. This market is huge and has almost any kind of fish
you could want. Puffer fish is the specialty in Shimonoseki, so almost ever
stand had it. We tried as many kind of fish as we could! My favorite was トロ (toro, fatty
tuna/tuna belly). I see it a lot on American sushi menus, but with limited
availably and I’ve never seen it actually available. It is considered by many one
of the best sushi ingredients, but there is not much toro on each tuna, so it can be hard to come by. I can’t wait to go
back sometime to have more!
We walked
down the wharf after leaving the market, but it started to rain so we hopped on
a bus and headed back towards the train station. We decided to head into
Fukuoka since Mike didn’t get a chance to see it other than through his plane
window. We walked around Hakata for a while looking at the shops.
Eventually we
headed to the Fukuoka Asian Art
Museum. They have an exhibit going on until January of Studio Ghibli cells and
layout designs. There were even some TVs set up next to the layouts showing you
exactly how the transition from layout to film occurred. At the end of the exhibit
everyone was given a little circle sticker and a black pen. We were told to
draw anything we wanted and stick it on the wall. Everything about the exhibit
was amazing!
We walked back to the train station after the museum, stopping at a few shrines along the way. We got ramen for dinner and then headed up to the 8th floor of Amu Plaza in the train station to find the Pokémon Center. We had a lot of fun playing the games and looking around. There was a big event going on because a new pack of cards had just been released, so we picked up a few packs as souvenirs. We shopped around a bit more in the mall before heading home.
Mike got on a plane Monday morning that left at 7:20 A.M. and he’s back in New York. I hope he can visit again soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment