So here it is, folks. The long-awaited, much anticipated, extraordinarily over-hyped account of our magically mysterious tour of Fukuoka, Japan.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the specific location of Fukuoka in relation to the rest of Japan, the internet is full of useful maps on the subject. Enjoy them!
Anyway, enough of this, I hear you all saying, get on with it!
And on we get.
Our adventure begins at 8:25pm (local time, obviously) on the evening of Wednesday, May 3. We finished our last classes of the evening, and took our prepacked bags out into the street to catch a taxi to the bus station to catch a bus to Daejon. Daejon is the bigger city about 30-40 minutes from Cheongju. We were at the back of the line, however, so our trip started out with us standing on the intercity bus for the trip. Not so bad though, really. Once in Daejon we took another cab to the train station to take the super speedy KTX (the bullet-train) down to the bustling megatropolis of Busan. That trip was lovely as always, and went by without incident, although we came to realize that the Busan train station is a place with a sketchiness all unto itself in this country, with vagrants an hobos galore. An interesting experience is always to be had, let me tell you.
When we left the train station in search of a cheap motel (for you see, gentle reader, our ferry to Fukuoka didn't leave until 10am on the following morning) we saw the first two picture-worthy things of the trip. They were, in order of our noticing them:
A big tower of lanterns, no doubt in celebration of Buddha's birthday, which was that very weekend:
and an enormous animatronic dragon thing. Blinking eyes and twinkling lights all over it:
We found ourselves a 25,000 won motel room which, although it was spectacular as you can well imagine, we completely failed to take any photos of whatsoever.
The next morning we hopped aboard the Kobee II, the speedy hydrofoil which was to whisk us away to the Land of the Rising Sun. The weather was absolutely perfect, and the crossing was smooth as can be. We saw some islands that I'm positive were/are home to myriads of pirates and various bucklers of swash with buried treasure everywhere. They were neat.
Anyway, I didn't get any pictures of the way across either, because for all the cool islands and whatnot (truth be told, we only saw about 3) it was mostly just water for a really really long way, so it wasn't particularly noteworthy.
Once we arrived in Fukuoka, however, the noteworthy things just started piling up. Literally. The first couple cool things we saw involved piling things to save space. Quite a good idea actually. Observe:
Seriously, in Japan, no matter what you want parked, they'll find some way of parking other similar items on top. Genius!
Speaking of parking, we started noticing that the pay parking lots had curious little contraptions under the cars.
There exists two schools of thought, between the two of us, as to the purpose of said contraption. It could either be a security feature, making theft of the car that much more difficult, or it could be something that makes sure that the parker has to pay for their parking if they ever want to drive their pretty little car again. Now that I think about it, it might also be a combination of the both. What a bright country.
Thursday and Friday were also holidays in Japan, although we never found out exactly what the holidays were for, so there were things going on everywhere we went, including this little ceremony that was literally taking place on a chunk of sidewalk.
We stuck around for a bit, but not long enough to discern what was going on, since we had hotel rooms to find and bags to find a resting place for.
So walk around in seach for a hotel room we did. The problem of arriving in a little country with LOADS of people in it right on a public holiday made itself readily apparent pretty quickly, since the first two or three hotels we went to were completely booked solid for that night. Luckily we had our trusty hotel guide for the area so we had quite a few more options ahead of us, when we spotted this sign, shining out above the trees like a beacon of rest and relaxation (a little R&R would've been welcomed by R&R at this point, let me tell you):
We went in to the lobby, where we saw a neat little "menu" for their rooms, featuring a picture of them, and the ones that were free were still lit up. It even had the prices listed right there for our viewing pleasure. They were pretty decent, too. We thought we were in luck. We thought wrong. I, delighted and ignorant of things to come, approached the counter with barely concealed glee to ask about what room we could have, since there were obviously several available, and the exceptionally polite, quite aplogetic Japanese hotel clerk woman looks at me and says "so sorry, um... no room...uh....Japanese person only."
...
seriously.
So, since it was far to late to become fluent in Japanese, get a good tan and find a team of skilled plastic surgeons, we left, bitter, angry, and most importantly, hotel-less.
Luckily the next hotel we tried had awesome rooms available for that night, and we were able to find a slightly cheaper one for the following night too.
but STILL! Jeez.
So once we got our non-racist hotel room sorted out, we took a load off for a little while, and I flipped on the TV, because I firmly believe that when travelling, observation of the culture is an important learning experience.
The very first channel I turned on had this showing:
Yes, that's a domo-kun.
Yes, it rode onto the stage on a unicycle.
Yes, I almost cried with delight.
So after I recovered my senses and talked Becca into being seen in public with me again, we went for a walk to explore our new surroundings. Fukuoka's really a beautiful city, with a couple little rivers and canals running through it. We stopped halfway across a bridge over one of them and just took in the scenery, then spotted something...a little out of place...
See if you can see it too.
I think it's blatantly obvious, but that might just be because I took the picture. Either way, if you haven't spotted it yet, I'm not telling you what it is. You'll just have to look harder.
No. No hints.
While we're on the subject of visual oddities, check out the way they bind magazines in Japan:
So that's cool too.
Not much else happened that day, since we were pretty tired, so we just hit a couple other minor sightseeing spots and called it a night, but not before going to a convenience store and grabbing some tasty beverages, which included the following:
I guess once Kirk got fired from the Cracker Factory he moved to Japan and started making chocolate milk.
It was alright-tasting. About what you'd expect from Milhouse's dad.
So that was day one. Day two was a fair bit more packed with sight and sites.
We went to this place called Canal City, which was a pretty big shopping area that we had briefly seen the night before, and then we set off in search of the Kushido Shrine, which was in the same area. We eventually found it, and boy was it cool, and surprisingly (or maybe not) different from its Korean counterpart.
Outside was a big statue with loads of cool bits to it. We got a passer-by to stop passing by and take our picture with it.
Then we went to check out the shrine itself, which was beautiful. There was a wedding going on inside while we were there, so it was done up extra pretty-like.
In that picture, you can just see a frilly bush thing in the bottom-left corner. It was a bush, with a fence around it, and onto the fence people had tied little Buddhist prayers, not entirely unlike the prayers that are stuffed into the cracks of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
The shrines that we saw also always had these cool hand-washing fountains with little wooden ladles to use.
A short while later we saw the bride and groom being paraded around the block in what is undoubtedly the classiest rickshaw EVER!
Down the street from the shrine was a folk museum/marketplace thing where I bought certain sisters their birthday presents (but shhh...don't tell them), and saw in one of the buildings a Japanese man working a loom, making this really cool cloth, but taking forever to do it. Makes you wonder why they don't just invent some sort of machine to do it for him. I guess they don't like the guy much...
I kept asking myself, "I see no fruit. Where's the fruit?" but thought I was safer keeping the thought to myself.
Next, we ate lunch at a little curry place, where I had the best curry I've ever had in my entire life, and then went to a place called Ohori Park, which is a really awesome lake with a little archipelago strung together with bridges that you can walk through, and a path that lets you walk around it as well.
We walked through.
In one of the parts of the lake you could rent rowboats or paddle boats, but not just ordinary paddle boats, but paddle boats shaped like swans or, if you were feeling particularly saucy...
SPEED paddle boats!!! Saucy indeed.
In the park we came across a vending machine that housed a particularly cool-looking soft drink, and that particularly cool-looking soft-drink's...sequel?
Rad.
I also got a picture of Becca in one of the pagoda-type things that jutted out into the lake, generally making for a good photo spot. I figured I'd post it cause she's so darn cute.
From there, we went to check out some castle ruins, which weren't really all that impressive, photographically-speaking, but were still really cool, and then walked around a bit more before heading back to Canal City, where we got dinner (in a manner of speaking...).
On the way there, I saw this car, and decided it was definitely picture-worthy.
So the moment has come.
The unveiling, if you will.
And you will. Oh, will you ever.
Remember when I mentioned before that we had briefly explored Canal City on our first night? Well while we were there, we happened to walk past a restaurant called Asian Kitchen, which had little window displays in the walls featuring some of their delicious wares, and showcasing a dessert of such magnificent proportions that it was decided right then and there that the next evening, it would be mine.
Oh yes, it would be mine.
It was mine.
Ladies and gentlemen of the blog-reading community, I present to you without further ado, the BIGGEST FREAKING DESSERT EVER!!!!!
There it is. The breathtaking, noon-day-sun-blocking conglomeration of ice cream, whipped cream, bananas, pineapple, grapes, cake, corn flakes, chocolate sauce and strawberry syrup that was to be my main course for the evening.
The garnish (THE GARNISH) was a full 1/4 of a pineapple, and the glass was rimmed with 6 banana halves.
Needless to say, it was intense. Intense and delicious.
It was also a bit of a spectacle, because in addition to the white kid with the enormous noggin consuming a dessert that overshadows the aforementioned noggin, the waitress announced the arrival of this magnificent confection with, I swear I'm not making this up, a gong.
Then it arrived, sparklers blazing, only to be followed by the manager and a polaroid camera.
Yup, that's right. We're now immortalized on the wall of the Asian Kitchen in the Canal City shopping centre in the Hakata area of Fukuoka Japan.
I thought you might not believe that part, so i got a picture of the picture.
After we finished, because finish we did, we walked around for a while, and discovered the perfect example of why people with a dislike or physical aversion to anyting stroby and blinky should just stay away from east Asia entirely.
I dubbed it The Wall of Epilepsy.
Seriously, all of those screens are blinking rapidly with nothing but shiny bright designs, for no apparent reason whatsoever. It was nuts.
A while later, we decided to eat something real, so we got in line for some of the street stall that are pretty famous in Fukuoka.
We got some delicious (if somewhat overpriced) ramyan, and then headed back to the hotel to crash.
Saturday, our ferry was due to leave at 3:45, and we got a wake-up call at 10:10, informing us that check-out time was 10:00. So after rushing around making sure that everything got packed up and nothing got left behind, we checked out and went on our way.
The weather had deteriorated significantly from the glorious day before, and it was windy and drizzly, so our options were somewhat limited as far as touristy stuff was concerned.
As we were wandering around trying to decide what to do next, we came across a building that we had seen in the distance before, but not close up. We're still not entirely sure what it is, but the front of it was covered with terraced gardens and trees and stuff and the whole thing was quite impressive.
We consulted our trusty tourist map and found the Fukuoka City museum, which was as yet unvisited, and decided that with the weather being as it was, it was definitely a museum-type day. It was actually quite cool, with really extensive exhibits spanning centuries of history from that area alone. Very nice.
Good looking building too.
After we finished at the museum, we rushed back to the subway, then hopped in a taxi and went straight to the ferry terminal.
The ride back was much, MUCH choppier than the ride there (
"The sea was angry that day my friends, like an old man trying to bring back soup at a deli") but we made it, and by 11:25pm we were back at our apartment in Cheongju, after 3 hours on the ferry, 100 minutes on the bullet train, 5 minutes in one cab then 35 minutes in another (we had missed the last bus back from Daejon).
All in all, an excellent trip.
There. It's 4:30 in the morning and I can barely type anymore, but the blog has been, officially, updated.
BOOYAH!