Strolling in Hakata

I've actually had very little free time this visit. My class schedule is up from 4 hours last time to 6 per day this time, which with the lunch break has meant 9.30-4pm every day, essentially. Because it's only three weeks in Fukuoka, I've also been socialising pretty frantically, so a lot of days I've been meeting friends for another 4 hours or so. The handful remaining I've done a lot of shopping, cooking and so on.

Anyway, I did end up with a chunk of time one day after school, and decided to wander down south of Hakata. I didn't really visit this district when I was here last time. I'm not sure it's especially interesting, but my time wasn't long enough that it was worth researching and then taking a trip out somewhere more distant - especially when it's getting dark at about 6pm.

From the station I headed south to Minoshima (美野島), which is an area I'd vaguely heard about. It's got various little shops and stalls - not touristy ones like in Hita, but perfectly ordinary shops for actual residents. Nothing too special, but a nice change from conbinis and twenty-storey company headquarters.

Sa- and pi- kuras

My last weekend in Fukuoka got a little complicated. I was lucky enough to have several friends suggest meeting up, but then ran into complications trying to actually schedule things. I suppose the trouble is that you can easily schedule one uncertain thing into a known schedule, but trying to juggle several things without any idea when they might happen is tricky.

What I did manage was to meet KT-san again. This time we didn't arrange anything as ambitious as going to another town (possibly a shame in retrospect, but the weather had been iffy) but just went for a walk around town. Obviously, we started in Maizuru Park.

The Tooth Event Horizon

This is a pretty old post that I didn't get round to finishing at the time - it actually refers to my first stay in Japan, in 2014!

Any location, in any town, has its quirks. My hometown is deeply peculiar (one might say dysfunctional, and be entirely accurate) and, though Fukuoka is a very different sort of place, I quickly discovered one of its (undoubtedly numerous) charming eccentricies: it appears to be the dentistry capital of the region, if not of all Japan. If I were antisocial enough to start slinging bricks around, a fair proportion would undoubtedly land on dentists. I started to feel hunted. Whenever I turned a corner, there, again, a dental clinic! Was I going round in circles (or, indeed, the bend)? Entirely misunderstanding some laughably-simple Japanese phrase that happened to appear on a wide range of businesses that were in no way dental clinics?

No.

More sakura and I'm not sorry

This week, KM-san suggested we go out for tempura. It's been eighteen months since we last went, so I was glad to go with her (via a quick trip to a certain otaku shop to buy a nerdy present for a delightfully nerdy friend).

We went to Hirao tempura near Tenjin. The way this works is that there's a vending machine-style order system. You insert money, choose a meal option and buy a voucher. You then go inside and work your way through the (seated) queue. When you get a seat at the bar (and they're bar seats, so I tend to find them a bit less reassuring than something firmly on ground level) you hand over your voucher. The staff are in the middle of the restaurant, with people seated all around them.

Sakuramatsuri begins

With the cherry blossom season opening, the Fukuoka Sakura Festival began at the weekend.

I met up with J-san to stroll around the festival a bit. The blossom wasn't really out at this point, so it's not quite the best day for it, but it was relatively peaceful and the place was pretty lively.

Kyushu Olle, the tourism board (or one fo them?) for Kyushu, which is naturally represented by an anthropomorphic sheep thing with a banana on its head. Or something.

Okonomiyaki II: revenge of Okonomiyaki

So I've been wanting to eat okonomiyaki again for about eighteen months, in fact, and KM-san kindly offered to go with me.

My schedule this year is much more consistent; I start at 9.30am and have classes until either 3pm or 4pm, with an hour for lunch and brief breaks between classes. There's more hours because this year (not being a long-term student) I'm on the conversation course track, not the generic track.

Unexpected Cuisine

We met fairly early, so we had time for a coffee and a walk before we went for food. I needed them too, as I'd inadvertantly eaten too much lunch and was very full!

I'm staying in Hakata, so we wandered north a bit in search of Higashi Park (東公園).

Akizuki bank holiday excursion

So after arriving in Japan on Sunday night, buying a small amount of food and heading to bed, I slept pretty well and woke up in good time for the first day of school. Except it wasn't school, due to a bank holiday; instead, there was an excursion arranged with some locals.

We were going to Akizuki, a castle town about 25 miles (by road, less as the crow flies) from Fukuoka.

A Shimmin Returns

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

The Manchester flight was fine; I sat next to a very pleasant bloke heading to Bali, and we chatted about spending time in Asia (he used to work in China), our mutual interest in other cultures, and various other things. Hope he's having a nice time at his daughter's wedding.

I reached Schiphol, and was immediately confused. My plan was to find out what I'd need to do and make sure I was in roughly the right part of a huge airport, then try to nap for a while. It was about 3pm, which made it midnight in Japan. Getting at least some sleep during the core sleeping hours for a new timezone is apparently important for adjusting quickly.

There were two problems facing me. One was that I had no idea where I should be going, specifically - direct to departures? Presumably, in which case... where was it?

End-of-trip reflections

So, now that I've finished, come home and had some time to digest it all, I wanted to reflect a bit on my whole six months at GenkiJACS, coming back to my feelings in the half-term update. I'm also looking at the evaluation form I completed at the end of my stay, although I won't post specific extracts.

While I will mention various negatives, it's always easier to pinpoint problems than things that were good. The latter tend to be vague and diffiuse, the former are often specific.

A birthday present

This one is written well in advance, but it seemed too good to pass up - a little birthday present for my brother.

Guess what I found in the bottom of a shopping centre?

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Moving home is always a difficult time. You have to wrap up loose ends at work (well, school), bid farewell to all your colleagues, pack an astonishing amount of stuff that you've somehow acquired during your residence, make travel arrangements, clean up the house, exchange farewell cards with your favourite café...

Why are you looking at me like that?

Okay, so a long time ago - six months almost to the day - I first staggered bleary-eyed and heavy-laded into Fukuoka. I spent an hour running around with a ridiculous amount of luggage in 37C temperatures, trying to find the mobile phone I was supposed to collect. Then, sweaty and cross, I lugged a huge amount of stuff from the airport all the way to my apartment, trying as I did so to work out how all this worked. I met my landlord, and went through a thorough explanation of the apartment, all of which I immediately forgot due to exhaustion.

Having dumped everything in my apartment, and napped for about an hour, I took the train into the city. I was already pretty confused by this point, incredibly hot, and thoroughly moody. My Japanese was poor enough that the underground was confusing and stressful. The prospect of struggling with all this for the next six months was very oppressive. But I needed to get my bearings, and that meant going to Tenjin, where I planned to work out where the school actually was so I wouldn't be late when we started. It's also the place where most shops are, and I needed various hings if I was going to live here for six months.

Shortly after arriving, I encountered a Starbucks. Now, I'm not normally a fan of Starbucks, to be honest. In the UK, I usually find most other cafés serve a better cup of tea (not surprisingly, they are American, it's not their thing), am not a huge fan of their snacks, and object to their tax evasion. But in this case, there are some crucial facts:

• As a Western chain store, I knew broadly how things worked there. The menu would be broadly recognisable, the names mostly English, and the buying procedure familiar. You line up, ask for something, and pay for it. I had no idea what would happen if I tried going into a more Japanese café.
• It had large, glass windows so I could comfortably see the inside, which looked unthreatening. As a chain store with a counter and tables, I wasn't going to be disturbed by waiters with questions I didn't understand, or crammed together with strangers who might talk to me unexpectedly.
• They would probably be used to Westerners, who were likely to go there.
• They definitely served tea and coffee.
• It was right in front of me.

And so I went in, and stammeringly ordered a coffee from a very kind, patient person, and apologised for my poor Japanese.

It's strange which relationships end up being important to you. Most of the time, everyone is anonymous to everyone else. Occasionally, someone has a significant influence on your life, often without even knowing. Often, you do the same to other people and never know. What's important all depends on your situation: that phase of your life, that day, that very second.

Since the first time went so well, and it turned out to be right in the centre of town and on my route to school, I went again. And having virtually no grasp of traditional Japanese shopping etiquette, I did all the wrong things: said hello and goodbye to the staff, made off-the-cuff comments while I ordered or waited for my drink, asked how they were. They very kindly permitted all this, answered nicely, and considerably reduced the amount of formal Japanese they used talking to me in order that I could understand a word of it. After a while, N-san politely asked me my name and introduced herself.

A little while later, when I turned up to the café, N-san introduced me by name to the lady serving me, and from there events were more or less inevitable. I felt very comfortable and welcome, and started going regularly before school. It was a convenient place, I worked out how to order tea the way I liked it (although quite soon everyone remembered), and could come in early to study while being just a few minutes from school, so I avoided the rush hour. I started having breakfast there quite often - they had nice scones, which felt more substantial and healthier than what most cafes serve, though admittedly that's close to damning with faint praise. Fruit isn't typically on the menu in Japanese cafés, but I'd often eat a banana at home before heading to Starbucks.

Towards the end of my stay, I was going more or less every day, either for breakfast or just a pre-school drink. The staff all recognised me and welcomed me, and chatted a bit as they took my order or came past to clean tables, and I felt very much at home there. This was only emphasised by the contrast with most cafes; as I said, Japanese culture is for shop staff to be formal and polite, and therefore distant. The crew at Starbucks were interested in my plans, and said how sorry they were that I'd be leaving soon, and to be sure and say goodbye to them before I did.

Since the staff had always been so kind and welcoming, I wanted to show my appreciation with a little something, so I got them a card, and a couple of little edible gifts to share out. This, my second farewell card, was very slightly easier to write than the first, but required no less attention. Whereas my friendship with M-san was pretty simple, it took me quite a while to work out exactly what I was grateful to everyone at Starbucks for, and research how to express this, while trying not to go overboard. Effusive gratitude is generally a bit alarming (at least in my culture, I'm still not sure about Japan!) and it's not exactly common practice in the first place.

I was also sorry that I didn't know many people's names; it still felt rather intrustive to ask anyone, so I only knew N-san and one colleague. People in customers service are in a slightly awkward position, as I know myself, and asking them to reveal personal information always seems inappropriate, particularly as women tend to get a lot of unwanted attention.

Anyway, I went to say my final goodbyes on Friday, taking my little bag of gratitude with me (along with my enormous rucksack), and had my usual breakfast as a kind of symbolic gesture. I wasn't entirely surprised when N-san and a colleage came over, since they knew I was leaving. What I hadn't really expected was that they were bringing me a farewell card signed by all the staff! I was very touched, and somewhat flustered, and because the cafe's busy even early on they were a little distracted by keeping one eye on work, so handing over my own bag and stammering my gratitude was less smooth than I'd have hoped.

Inside not pictured for obvious reasons.

Still, I got to say thank-you to some people who have been very important in forming both my impressions and my experiences of Fukuoka. That first, often-reinforced impression of kindness and friendliness helped me to cope with the many difficulties of moving to Japan, and my regular fixture of study breakfasts there was a significant facet of my life in Fukuoka. I was able to get a photo taken with N-san (not posted to protect her anonymity), and wish I'd had a chance to get one of everybody.

Today I went to a different Starbucks and got a cup of tea from a stranger; I'm already missing them.

That's always the problem with building warm little nests for yourself. It's cold when you have to fly.

A-templing we did go: Hakata Temple Illuminations

So recently (although not as recently as I'd like - bit behind) a group of us were gathered by C for a final outing before she left, and we attended the 博多千年煌夜 (Hakata Millenial Illuminations). Basically, various temples in the Hakata area were open by night (well, bits of them) and lit up. It was interesting. Unfortunately, my camera really can't cope well with night - embarrassingly, a lot of people's phones were much happier to take pictures that looked like what your eyes saw. Well, it's a bit old, I suppose.

I confess I am not especially sure of where we went, but two places come usefully to mind: Shoufuku-ji and Touchou-ji, because I went there recently by day.

Touchou-ji

Most of the temples had various food stalls set up inside or nearby, although I don't think the temples themselves were running them!

I bought what proved to be a shark dumpling, a Hokkaido dish, apparently. It was... dumply?

Somewhere or other?

I really don't know where this temple was. The ladies led us there, it was dark, the brochure has very little information and one photo per temple. It was mostly gardens, which look pretty similar.

I'm quite pleased with these pictures of leaves, but then I did take a lot!

More food stalls! Here I was prompted to buy and eat something sweeter. I'm not sure what the Japanese is, but they were like　Chinese 汤圆 (glutinous rice balls with sesame and other tasty things)　in a liquid made from faintly sweet adzuki (Japanese red bean).

Joutenji (承天寺)

The special feature of this temple was that it opened up the buildings, giving access to a lot of places you can never normally see. A big hit was the Zen garden, which had been illuminated with colour-shifting lights. My camera really couldn't do the place justice, but I tried.

Something or other, probably meaningful.

Finally dragging ourselves from the Zen garden steps (you can't actually go inside) we passed through the building.

These people are lining up at an altar - I didn't actually mean to take their photo, I normally avoid that sort of thing, but the picture took a few seconds due to lack of flash. Nothing personal seemed to happen in that time so I felt it was probably okay.

I just like the contrast in these pictures.

Why, Cthulhu! I wasn't expecting to find your head here.

And a very cunningly-made wind-chime that made its sutra (I think? I was told it's a sutra) spin permanently in the breeze.

Somewhere else

You had to buy tickets in advance in blocks of, I think, eight. Somehow, it worked out as best for us to go to four temples, but we were running short of time. We rushed off to try and fit in a fourth temple, but arrived too late. However, the man at the gate very kindly let us just peek our heads in to see a few of the lights.

Surprisingly, I cannot identify it! Shocking, I know.

And the finale

Obviously, after rushing around four temples, we were all getting hungry. There just aren't enough photos of food on this blog.

One of the many festival floats you sometimes see around the city.

Group photo! Taken by a passing stranger from far enough away that everyone is fairly anonymous, sadly.

It was pretty hard to find a spot, especially as our group was fairly large, while many Japanese eateries are very small, built for lone diners or pairs to grab a bite after work. After some wandering (many places were full near the temples, and others were closing as it was 9pm or later) our Japanese friends a cheerful pub-like place where they were able to squeeze us in.

This is where we ate: Ikko (一虎).

Salad made with fried crispy daikon (huge, white, radish-carrot looking thing, which I eat a lot here).

Beef with negi (a kind of onion-leek relative)

Boiled dumplings in the soup used for ramen.

Chicken pieces with some sauce I managed to avoid, and an okonomiyaki to share.

Between all this, we managed to eat a huge amount of food, drink a little beer and talk for ages. It was enormous fun and a nice contrast to the rather individual pastime of temple-viewing - what with queues, crowds, attempts at quiet and people taking photos, you couldn't talk that much in the temples.

I even, as part of my campaign of trying new things, ate a mussel. It was... mostly like other slightly chewy seafood, really. Perfectly edible, not my favourite thing ever.

Wrap-up

As usual, I had a fantastic time with all my friends and acquaintances here, and am sorry that the time left for further adventures is growing so short. Only ten days left in Fukuoka, and seventeen in Japan. It's a strange feeling.

Housematery

So recently one of my favourite humans managed to find the time to pop over to Japan for a week. That would be my old housemate, SC. We'd been talking about it for months, so it was brilliant to see it coming together.

As it worked out, SC basically spend some time with me at the weekends either side, and then shipped up to Kyoto during the week while I was at school. I kind of wish I'd been able to go to, but I really need to maximise my study time while I'm here. This is especially true because I'd missed several days due to illness just before she arrived, and wasn't on good form for a while afterwards. So I'd fallen behind, and honestly I'm still struggling to catch up.

The first night, all we managed was to meet up and eat. After strolling around for a while looking for promising places where I could understand the menu, we picked up some food from a tiny restaurant in Tenjin, and went to this place. It's a financial services building with a cafe outside, but everything was closed by, oh, 8.30pm or whenever we went. So we sat outside in the cool darkness, talking about stuff and eating chicken with curry sauce and rice. It was really nice. The only downside was, as ever, the lack of bins! I ended up taking the remnants awkwardly home on the train, which is a bit of a hassle when it's pots half-full of curry sauce and bones, even when you have a bag for them. Thankfully no leaking occurred.

Temples Galore

The next day we met up near Hakata station, and went a-templing. We wandered up to Shoufuku-ji, the first Zen temple in Japan. It was great. It's a large, very calm, very tranquil place (at least, when we visited!) and after wandering around for a while, we sat and talked on the steps of the main hall. There was nobody around for us to inconvenience, after all.

After that, we proceeded up the street and bumped into Touchou-ji,, the oldest Shingon temple in Japan. Here we pondered the very orange tower, and admired the very impressive inner hall, although neither of us is in a position to appreciate the significance of what we saw.

Since we were running short of time, we returned to Hakata station and discovered the array of shops and restaurants in the huge tower above it. Not something I'm used to - our stations are pretty much two-dimensional. We ate at an Okinawan restaurant, which was mildly bittersweet from my perspective, but the food was good. Then we parted ways for the week.

Kumamoto II: the Return

The following weekend SC came straight down to Kumamoto, and we arranged to meet there. Having already been once, I was in a position to act as guide and show us around. The weather was far nicer than the first time I'd been, and having company was also a lovely change for my tourism experiences, so all in all I had a great time. We saw the castle first, and it was very pleasant.

I have no idea what this is for. Possibly some form of sundail, or a crude compass?

I was delighted to see that the costume performance was happening that day. On my previous visit it had been rained off, but here we were able to get a good spot and watch, although I didn't understand much. The Japanese used seemed a bit old-fashioned (fitting the personas) and mostly seemed to consist of very long sentences that didn't contain much information. But the dancing was fun:

We took a break in the castle to eat some mochi, which SC had been given by a girl she met on route. She seems to have befriended roughly half the population of Kyoto over the course of a week, which doesn't unduly surprise me.

They were delicious, and with that very healthy lunch we pushed on through the Hosokawa place. It doesn't take that long if you're not trying to fill your day, so we were able to cram it in quickly. Although we discovered SC had managed to lose her ticket while walking around the castle, the Hosokawa staff very kindly let her in on the grounds that I had mine (probably guessing it was unlikely we'd randomly met in Kumamoto, and thus we'd presumably both bought castle tickets).

Afterwards we ate ramen in a nice little place, and then went for coffee.

One of the odd little events that holidays get you cropped up when we were getting our coffees. SC spotted a crowd with a van on a corner, and asked me to explain. I worked out that it was one of the many campaigning vans going around recently, this one belonging to Ishihara Yasanari, a candidate for mayor. While I can't quite make out the details of his policies, such crowd-pleasers as "town planning that each individual can be shining symbiosis", "school volunteer grandparents region take advantage of the good technique" and "I want to be able to take the city hall staff test in immediately towards the blind" explain the riotous reception he received. And we can all surely agree that "women are cheerful town, full of full of energy", can we not? As customary, the van was deafeningly loud and probably quite annoying for most of the local shops.

There was also a bit of singing with a rather talented lady; as far as we could tell she just turned up, sang on top of a van and then took her family off home, so I'm not sure whether she was a planned part of the performance, or simply decided it would be a lark and everyone was too polite to stop her...

It hadn't occurred to me that this would be fascinating, but as SC pointed out, an election hustings is a real novelty if they don't really bother with things like democracy or attracting the popular vote in your country. It was one of those teachable moments for me.

Back to Fukuoka

Due to various events going on, Fukuoka was pretty much full to the gills that weekend, and we'd been worrying about where she could stay. However, a friend of mine very kindly stepped in and offered to let SC sleep at her place overnight! Considering they'd never met and I've only known my friend a few months, this was amazing. もう一度ありがとうございました！

We reluctantly took up the offer when nothing else seemed available, short of helping her find a room in a love hotel (probably embarrassing, but a good anecdote for parties!). There was a fair bit of stress with the arrangements, as we were a bit late coming back from Kumamoto, and then had to take locate and take a Japanese bus (for the first time) while texting rapidly in Japanese (also for the first time). In the end we made it, and duly met up, laden with omiyage to thank my friend for this enormous favour. The next morning I called round to pick SC up, and was invited in to meet the family. This was another first, as I've never been in a Japanese home before. It was really lovely, sipping ultra-posh Fortnum and Masons' Orange Pekoe and chatting away. As far as I can tell, I managed not to do anything particularly impolite, which was a relief.

We left after an hour or so, and headed to Ohori Park for a bit of exercise. My friend had explained that there was a traditional Japanese garden there, which I'd always assumed was a temple and so not bothered visiting (I've seen a lot of temples, and I go there for the park). This proved to be another very tranquil place, and we wandered round for ages talking about jobs and politics. Ah, the exciting life of a 30-year-old! Then we picked up something to eat and drink from the cafe, and headed to the airport.

After a certain amount of confusion, SC managed to check in. Meanwhile I was accosted by a lady doing surveys, but we eventually managed to establish that SC, rather than I, should be doing it. A complex trilingual conversation ensued, since the lady turned out to be Chinese. Officially I can speak Chinese, but in this case it was much easier for me to use Japanese most of the time. That added a bit of extra interest to the trip.

And then it was time, and I said my very reluctant goodbyes and headed back home. It was lovely to see an old friend for the first time in months, and I spoke the most English I have since the summer. While I have got to know some very nice people here, and had a lot of fun, it's a different thing from from hanging out with a long-term, comfortable friend and just chewing the fat over ordinary stuff.

Come back soon!