Fukuoka2

Fukuoka part 2

Hello again :) Yes I’m all happy again, I had a good night’s sleep ;) I slept for 12 hours straight last night, a well deserved sleep after having been awake for so long hehe. I woke up about 7:30 local time, which was perfect because it gave me exactly enough time to get up, have a shower (we have a mini mini bathroom with a mini mini shower, but it was heavenly!) and go to breakfast. Breakfast is served here in the hotel from 7 til 9 am. It’s nothing special, but really just what you need. Cup of coffee, orange juice, slice of toast, salad (yes, salad). I did some internetting on the SERIOUSLY slow computer downstairs (we’re on the 8th floor) but since it was something like 2 am in Holland I didn’t have anyone to chat with :(

After breakfast we managed to all get together (we had lost two of the guys – they were taking a walk apparently) and so we decided to go to the center, which is two subway stops away. Using the subway here is relatively easy. You check on a big sign how much it costs to go to your stop, put that much money in the machine, and you get your ticket. It doesn’t necessarily say where you’re going, just the zone you entered and how far you can go, so to speak. You don’t have to check the times either, trains go as often as needed really.

We spent the morning and beginning of the afternoon looking around shops really. We found all sorts of interesting things. Shops here are found in tall buildings a lot, so you have one big building with lots of floors filled with shops. The first building we entered, Solar Plaza or something, seemed like this really posh place. We got into a really posh elevator with a very funny sign (see picture) and just got off on this random floor. This part is for Thijs and Luuk (and Laura): We found a shop with so many Vans shoes, you can’t even picture it. There are more Vans there then the independent outlet, like 3x more. That’s a LOT. Also, shoes were around 2000 – 5000 yen. The 5000 ones seemed to be the expensive ones. 5000 yen is around 35-40 euros I believe, so imagine the ‘walhalla’ ( I don’t know how to spell that hehe). I have pictures!
Next stop was a “punk” shop, basically full of nick-nacks: band shirts, bracelets, wallets, lighters, posters, belts, clocks, random electronic thingies etc. Reminded me of Amsterdam a little bit! (see picture). After having a good look around we went off to find some lunch, and went into a little shop called “Pronto”. It wasn’t anything special, but nice to have a break. I had an ice tea as I wasn’t really hungry.
On the way to lunch we saw a sign for ‘Tower Records’, a big cd and dvd shop in Japan. This one even advertised 3 floors of music and dvds, so we went in! The top floor was jazz, classical and some dvd’s, the floor below that was pop and rock, some soul. So this was the floor to be! I found all sorts of cool cd’s, Luuk and Thijs, see pictures :) They had this really cool system where you just scanned any cd you wanted to listen to and then it showed up! I listened to this random Japanese cd by the band “hige” (meaning mustache in this case) and they all had these weird fake mustaches hehe. But it was good stuff, might get their cd, not sure yet.

We looked around a few more cute and funny shops, took lots of pictures, and then left to get some coffee from the Starbucks! We asked the nice lady there how to get to the nearest arcade. We found “Round 1” and had a jolly old time in the arcade playing various games and making purikura, tiny photos. You all get into this booth and do different poses and stuff, and then when all the pictures are taken, you can add all sorts of drawings and writings, what you want. See pictures!

When we finally got enough of the rather loud games arcade we walked straight into a karaoke bar :P We ended up paying about 500 yen per person for the karaoke, including a drink for everyone. That’s an hour of karaoke + a drink for about €3,50. We’re almost all terrible singers (all except Claudia in fact – no offense to the others) so if my hearing was damaged from the arcade, it was after the karaoke ;) Just kidding.

Anyway, we had had enough of karaoke by this time and decided to go back to Ohori (the area where the hotel is) to get something to eat. The guys had asked the people in the bar they went to last night where we could get ‘tonkotsu ramen’, the area specialty. So that’s what we set off to find, and find it we did. I had some kare raisu (curry rice – Japanese curry) and the others all had ramen (I didn’t feel like it). It was simple yet effective!

So now I’m back at the hotel, writing this piece and being very jealous of Claudia, who’s laptop has detected a wireless internet thingy from some neighbour who has not secured his/her network, and so she’s now enjoying free internet, free of all the crap downstairs * lucky* :)

Tomorrow morning we are off to Nagasaki where we’ll be staying in another hostel til we can move in to our dorms. So, next message from Nagasaki!

Good night!

X Jenn