First Goodbye

School last week was again pretty normal. I had a good time at Matsugae and enjoyed eating lunch with the students in their classroom during the week. I went out for dinner on Monday with Kikumi and Shinki, but other than that I pretty much stayed home getting work done during the week.

Friday night I went out with Leah and one of my teacher, Yamato. We went to a restaurant in Kokura that none of us had been to before, but passed by often. It was really good and I'm so glad we went! After dinner we went to Orange Door. I was helping Kikumi and bar tending that night. Before it got busier I was able to sit down and play cards with Leah, Yamato, and Caol who came to join us. Around midnight my friends left and I stayed behind the bar until I headed home. It was a really fun night!

On Saturday I cleaned up my apartment in the morning and ran errands in the afternoon. For dinner I took the train into Fukuoka and met with a bunch of JETs for the (first of many) Sayonara Party. It was at one of my favorite restaurants in Fukuoka and it was really nice to see everyone. I don't often go into Fukuoka, so I don't get to see them very often. Jake, Greg, and I left a little early to grab one more drink before going home and it was nice to spend some time with them. I caught the last train back to Kokura and all in all it was a great night.

Sunday I had work for an English camp I won't be attending. It was fun seeing all the students, especially the students I knew from last year or other schools, but it was a little sad for me to be there since I will be gone before the camp starts. It was just an afternoon full of meetings, so it didn't take too much time. After we got out I went over to Heart Key to practice with Kikumi's band. I'll sing two new songs with them next Sunday and we wanted to practice for a bit! For dinner I met up with Leah, Juha, Marc, Tanya, and Megan at Cha Cha Town. We ended up at a 回転寿司 (kaiten zushi, conveyor belt sushi) restaurant. We had an early dinner so that we could catch a movie afterwards. We went to see Mad Max: Fury Road since it came out here on Saturday. We all really enjoyed the movie! Leah, Juha, and I all walked home together afterwards and it was a great end to a great weekend.

Owl Cafe

This week was a quiet one. I saw many of my friends for dinner throughout the week to talk about upcoming trips and other things. Friday one of Megan's friends was visiting from Portland, Sam, so we went to dinner at 笑笑 (Wara Wara, and izakaya) to welcome him to Kitakyushu. We had a great dinner and afterwards went to Karaoke-Kan for Sam's first ever karaoke experience. Some people stayed out later, but I decided to head home after karaoke.

On Saturday I slept in before meeting Megan at Kokura station. We took the train into Fukuoka to meet up with Sam again and show him around. We found Sam at Hakata station and showed him around. We went to canal city for some sight seeing and shopping. Afterwards we went to Fukuoka's owl cafe. It was my first time going, although I've wanted to go for a while. It was so much fun! You have an hour to spend in the cafe. You start upstairs where you have your drink and are told the rules for the cafe. Then, you head downstairs to hold and pet the owls. The staff was incredibly nice and was very happy we could speak Japanese. We all held five different owls and had a great time! Another patron asked if she could take pictures of us with the owls and the cafe took pictures of us with the owls to put on their website. It was a ton of fun and I'm so happy we got to go! After leaving the owl cafe we stopped for some bubble tea and walked around one of the many temples in Fukuoka. We caught a bus outside the temple once we'd finished our tea and headed to Tenjin to check out a gaming store. We had conveyor belt sushi for dinner and headed back to Hakata, where we said goodbye to Sam and headed back to Kokura.

Sunday I woke up early to clean and play some games before meeting Marc and Tanya for lunch. I ran some errands in the afternoon before meeting back up with Marc, Tanya, and many others to celebrate Tanya's birthday. We went to a Korean restaurant and the food was fantastic. Everyone split up after dinner and Megan and I grabbed a coffee before each heading home.

This week should be another quiet one, although a bit more eventful. Graduation is on Thursday and I'm going out with the Shinozaki staff on Friday celebrate. Also on Friday Leah will be moving closer into Kokura. Although I won't be able to help her on Friday because of school, I will most likely go over Saturday to help her unpack and get settled in. It'll be nice having her closer!

Mike's Visit!

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 4^th 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 8^th 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!

Baseball!

So this last weekend I spent some time in Fukuoka City. I live so close, but I rarely venture over to our city next door. This weekend, however, about 30 or 40 JETs got together for an AJET even; we went to see Fukuoka's baseball team, the Softbank Hawks, play in the Fukuoka Dome Stadium. Going to a baseball game in Japan was something I had wanted to do last time I was here, but never got the chance to. Leah and I were the only two Kitakyushu JETs going, so we met at Kokura and hopped on the Sonic train for the 45 minute ride to Fukuoka. We met some friends on the subway and met everyone else at the stadium. I didn't know a lot of the other JETs since we came from all over the prefecture. We all quickly made friends, grabbed a beer and some popcorn, and watched the cheerleaders and mascots dance before the game started.

We were sitting near the away teams', the Seibu Lions, cheering section by the outfield. The game started off very poorly for the Hawks. The Lions scored three runs in the first two innings and the Hawks were still at zero. The game continued poorly for the Hawks and us JETs talked though much of the game. The crowds at times were more fun to watch, every player had their own little song that the crowd sang when they came up to bat. People also had small plastic bats that they clapped together in different rhythms. Seeing a whole stadium doing a synchronized cheer was pretty cool. There were also bracelets you could buy that looked like clear watches. The "watch" face would light up different colors based on what was happening in the game and so when a big play happened, for example if we scored a run, all of a sudden the whole stadium would start flashing colors from these bracelets. At the beginning of the seventh inning, though, the cheering was by far the best. Everyone in the stadium had a really long balloon and blew them after the sixth inning. Instead of tying the ends of the balloons, everyone just held onto them. Just before the Hawks went to bat their song started playing and everyone let the balloons go flying into the air. Pretty much everyone in the stadium had sent out a balloon and it was really amazing to watch.

Some people were going to a nijikai (second party) after the game at a nearby beer garden. The game was running long and not looking good for the Hawks and it was getting close to the reservation time, so many of the JETs left at the begging of the eighth inning. The score was 5 for the Lions and 3 for the Hawks. The Lions scored again in the top of the eighth. I stayed at the game with about a quarter of the JETs. I was with my friend David, who had been to four other Softbank Hawks games and said he had yet to see them win. I was still hopeful. It was my first Japanese baseball game after all, I wanted my team to win! We did manage to tie in the bottom of the ninth and the game went into extra innings. I was so excited I bought a Softbank Hawks hat and some more popcorn and went back to cheer with the few JETs still there. The Lions were up first and didn't get any runs. The Hawks had two outs, but managed to get a run and we won! Everyone went crazy! It was so much fun! (Clearly we won because I bought that hat.)

After the game there was a ceremony for a retiring player. It was very nice, some team mates sang to him, he got a whole bunch of flowers, and he walked around the stands while people threw streamers. The real reason we stayed, though, was because if the Hawks win they light fireworks in the dome. There were strings that came down from the ceiling with the fireworks on the end and seeing fireworks inside of a dome was very surprising, but very fun to watch.

After the game I went out for ramen and gyoza with David. He was leaving that night with some friends, but let me stay in his apartment because there was a Fukuoka Board Gaming meet up the next morning and I didn't want to go back to Kitakyushu just to return to Fukuoka in the morning. Not only can that be expensive because of the long train ride, but I would have had to get up really early. I played board games for twelve hours the next day before going back to Kitakyushu and just for my mom, my pieces made friendship circles.

All in all it was an amazing weekend! I can't wait to go to another game and spend more some more time in Fukuoka!