First Day in Japan

Welcome to Bike Land!!

Okay, so I should have blogged yesterday's events this morning when I woke up at 3 am. Unfortunately, I was trying way too hard to go back to sleep (I never did get back to dreamland). It is now 3 pm and I have only had one 30 min nap.

Yesterday, Shelly and I basically explored the area. First we tried to find the ocean, what we really found was the marina. It's cool, they are definitely real fishing boats there (none of those joy boats that everyone in south jordan owns).

Then, we headed toward the Ohori Park. It is huge!! You can't believe how pretty it is! There is an entire lake in the middle of it. Around the lake is a track that lots of people walk/jog on. Along with their dogs so you have to watch out for piddle.

The Ohori Park is actually quite famous, and after seeing it, it isn't hard to see why. It's a borderline national park! There are tons of things to do in it. You can take the swan boats onto the lake, play baseball, play on the huge playground, walk on the track, explore the foresty areas and go fishing in the designated fishing areas. There are also free theatre productions every once in awhile.

Everyone here stares at us. I did not realize that we were Fukuoka's only gaijin (foreigners). Actually, there are 3 other foreigners in our dorm but they are all asian.

Shelly and I are sort of a novelty here at the Wings Nishi Koen Dorm. Everyone knows that we can't speak english, so they don't say anything to us beyond "konnichiwa" (hello) and "ohayo gozaimasu" (good morning).

After a rather sad breakfast of riceballs and soda from the pluthera of vending machines (they are literally on every corner) we decided to once again find the ocean. Unfortunately, we went the wrong way.

Luckily, after touring a greater park of the inner city, we stumbled upon our school!! Huzzah! That was easy to find . . . Anyway, touring was not very fun, mostly because I was quite tired.

Then we went shopping! Not actually that exciting. We bought butter, some chips that taste like Kudos, milk, grapefruit juice and Pocari Sweat (like Gatorade).

Now, after getting lost several times, we were ready to find the ocean. And we did, after a very long walk. We went under the free way and along a really long road. It must have been over 10 blocks from our house.

But, it was all worth it! The beach was kinda overgrown with grass. I don't think that people actually swim in the ocean because we found lots of washed up jellyfish. And even saw one that was still in the water. Ew.

There were a few other people at the beach, of course they all stared. As we were making our way home, we found the Yahoo! Dome. It is very large. It is where the Fukuoka Hawks (Fukuoka's baseball team) plays. They actually had a game on the day that we arrived.

We found a fruit/vegetable store on our way home and bought expensive strawberries, but we were soooooo hungry! It was definitely worth it. Especially since we ate them for dinner too.

After buying the strawberries, we happened upon a 7/11, here we bought dinner and the rest of our lunch. We stopped in a park and finished off some more riceballs and gyoza.

Finally, we arrived home. We decided to take a nap and that we wouldn't sleep more than an hour. Shelly slept for 6 hours before waking me up. By then it was bed time. Hence the reason I woke up at 3 this morning.

But today we have vowed not to sleep at all! Not until at least 9pm, otherwise we will be very tired at school tomorrow.