So on monday we went with Yohei-san, his wife and Utahn friends to go see Yoshigonari Historical Park. The tour we followed was in Japanese, so one of the guys (his name was Boston) translated for us. But he was being funny, so he told us all sorts of lies. Basically, I don't really know anything true about the site. I know that it's really old, the people were polygamists, man and wives slept in different houses, and that supposedly (but how anyone would know this, I don't understand) there was the rich people and the poor people side. But here's the weird part, the rich people never left their enclosure. They were too "special" or something (Yohei's wife translated this part, so we know that the tour guide said it). I don't know if I believe it though. The enclosure was really small.
It would have been really fun, but it rained a ton and my legs were soaked nearly to my knees (I'm not sure how that happened, I never step in puddles). It was really cold and Shelly and I had to share an umbrella. It sucked.
Afterwards, we went to a little Hakata Dontaku festival to eat noodles out of bamboo pipes. You have to catch the noodles as they slide down, then you put them in your broth cup and enjoy! It costed 300 yen, but Yohei-san insisted on paying. It was interesting, but I don't really like cold noodles. Shelly does, but I don't like not being able to taste the broth. Tasteless noodles are kinda gross.
Then we went to some shopping district that it built around the second largest ferris wheel in the world. Here Shelly and I bought yellow watermelon and huge sweet potato fries (japan makes tons of different things out of sweet potatoes, you can even get sweet potato candy).
Then we went to a Ramen shop--it was delicious, but then again, Fukuoka is known for it's awesome Ramen.
Yesterday we went to Kumamoto. We dropped our stuff off at Evan's home (or maybe it was his mother-in-law's, I was confused) the headed off to a soba dojo. Here we mixed, rolled and cut our noodles. After we finished they made it into either hot or cold soba. I, of course, ordered hot. While all of this was going on, it went from rather hot to hail. It was very interesting, plus our Philipino friends had never seen hail before. They were really excited.
Afterwards, we went to Jigoku (Hell) Onsen. It was amazing, but it was a hot spring so it smelled really bad. There were 3 different kinds of baths, the hell onsen (straight hot spring) and 2 different regular onsens. Unfortunately, you couldn't wash your hair here. It kinda sucked cause I really needed a bath.
Then we had a japanese bbq (which was really good) and watched hilarious japanese tv. It was really weird, I don't know how to explain what we watched. But I did learn that japanese humor is really weird. The acts that I thought were the funniest scored the lowest. The ones I thought were just plain weird, scored the highest.
Today, we went to the cleanest onsen in japan. It was really nice, but really, really hot. I was really glad though, because here they provided shampoo/soap because you are required to wash yourself before getting in (otherwise it wouldn't be the cleanest onsen anymore).
Then we climed up Mt. Aso. I didn't really like it. Oh, and did I mention? Mt. Aso is located inside the largest (I think) volcano in the entire world! People live inside this valley! But only the crater is active and the last people to die were tourists viewing the crater (and that happened 30-40 years ago). There are mountains inside the volcano. And the edge of the volcano is so far away that you can hardly see it. It was unbelievable.
Then we went to Kumamoto Castle, but we only had an hour so we just climbed up the main tower, got a picture with a ninja and toured the palace (but you can't even see all of it). Finally, (at about 8) we were back home. But this is only home for 3 more nights.
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