I forgot to mention that we had English Class on Wednesday, not very many people showed up since it was a holiday, but the people that were there were very excited to see us. Instead of having a lesson, we split into groups and just talked for about an hour. There we met Yuki who offered to take us on a tour of Fukuoka (even though he claimed to speak really bad english, he was quite good).
On thursday we had nothing to do (beyond school) so we went shopping (again), but I don't remember what we bought...
Friday was the same, we had nothing to do, so we went shopping once again. I don't really know what we got then either, we just went shopping too much this week. :P
On saturday we had agreed to meet Yuki at Takamiya Station at noon. He was a little late, and we were very early, so we had to wait about 30 mins (we were 20 mins early...). First we went to a hyaku en ramen shop (100 yen ramen) and it was actually really good. The weather was very warm though, so I felt really hot after eating my noodles. Plus, I'm not actually that good at eating noodles. Even when I have a fork I'm pretty awful. And I definitely can't slurp the noodles like you're supposed too.
Next, Yuki offered to take us to Daizafu temple, but since it was over 40 mins away, we decided to go to Hakata Port Park. It was really interesting and we got to go up this really tall building, from up high, we could see a boat race which was really cool. Here we met this girl and her dad. Her dad was pretty adamant about her asking us questions in english (she was about 8) and I kinda felt bad for her, but she seemed to really like us and her dad definitely did.
After that we toured this shopping/aquarium thing. Here we met two really nice obaasan who kept asking Yuki which one of us was his girlfriend (I pretended to not understand what they were saying). They talked to us for a looooong time and gave me a ticket to a dance party thing (which we didn't go to).
Next, Yuki took us to a closer temple that had an ancient tree in front of it. It was one of the coolest things I've seen here. We also drank some of the temple water by using the weird bamboo ladels. It was really fun. We talked and walked around the temple grounds, chased some pigeons, found a pinecone, had little kids chant the abcs for us, and finally went home.
Yuki repeatedly thanked us for going with him, even though it should have been us that were thanking him. He's the one who insisted on paying for our ramen, drinks and icecream--not counting gas, parking, ect. Plus he was nice enough to take us around Fukuoka!
Afterwards, we went to canal city (even more shopping!) There was a big party going on because it is Golden Week and Hakata Dontaku started on today (sunday).
On sunday, we went to church and said our goodbyes. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring presents. We also promised to come back one day. A couple in the ward invited us to go see some ruins with them tomorrow, they have some friends coming from Utah so they thought we would like to go to. Of course we agreed. They told us that we would probably leave really in the morning, which in japanese means 9-10am (I had been thinking as early as 6).
Afterwards, we went to Tenjin to see the Hakata Dontaku. Overall, I thought that it was pretty overrated, but it was still fun. We tried all sorts of things including, chocolate covered bananas, shaved ice with milk, fresh strawberries with hard candy over them, fried mochi with red bean paste in the middle (i really don't like mochi), unflavored cotton candy, and okonomiyaki on a stick.
They have a game where you can attempt to catch goldfish with a paper wand-like thing, but I didn't know that you can also catch turtles. If I lived here, I definitely would have tried to catch a turtle!
We watched a guy make amazing balloon animals, and attempted to see the parade (people here forget that we have a gaijin perimeter when there is a parade).
But that's it for this week. So far on the agenda for next week is the ruins trip with the couple in our ward (mon), mt. aso with our school (tues and wed), genki jacs graduation (friday) and leaving for tokyo (saturday). I'm really going to miss being here.
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