Eikaiwa night out!

Here is a photo of Serenity in her Eikaiwa girls (before Will arrived) at an Izakaya in Kurume -- fun time!

Morning Quake

Well, we felt our first Japanese earthquake this morning! It measured 5.2 on the Richter scale, and its epicenter was somewhere about 70 meters below the ocean floor in the sea between Kyushu and Shikoku. It woke Will up this morning, and I shook on the computer stool as I checked my email. (Here's a link to the quick story.) Cool!!! :)

~Serenity

Serenity-sensei

The vice principal at the junior high school took some photos of Serenity last week as she introduced herself to two 8th grade classes!


Here she is trying to draw Japan on the blackboard. They always laugh.


Come on kids! RAISE YOUR HANDS!!


Poor kid. He murmered something in English, and the American came over to try and hear what he said. (They're so quiet!!!)

So there you have some photos of Serenity-sensei.

Typhoon Fun!

Hey. How cool is this? I know, I know. It's just our names. But when the lights went out during the last typhoon (Typhoon Ju-San (13)), the flashlights and my camera were all we had to entertain ourselves! (After a few rounds of tile rummy).

Pretty good, huh? Come on. EIGHT letters! And a CROSSED T!

Around our town...

It takes about 30 minutes to leisurely ride our bikes to the nearest hills/mountains - a town called Amagi. There is a nice park at the base of the hills.

The creativity of the park designers...nothing like a jungle gym with dragons.

This is looking down on the park and pond from a picnic area up on the first hill.

Here you can see the picnic area from a look-out on the top of the hill...this is facing north towards the mountains and forest...not much for towns back here...lots of thick forest.

Here's a trail to the top of one of the mountains...very thick and beautiful semi-tropical jungle.

After hiking about 2 km to the top of the 1,200 foot mountain, Will wrung his t-shirt out on the deck. I kid you not...this puddle is sweat just from my t-shirt...it's damn humid.

Here's a view looking southwest from the 1,200 ft mountain...this is the valley we live in.


And the valley looking northwest.

Beautiful butterflies are all over this area...not just in the mountains, but near our home also.

And...the huge purple earthworm thing. It was longer until I touched it, and like earthworms do, shortened himself and started wriggling around.
I've never seen an earthworm even close to this big. Bright purple and as thick as my finger...
we thought it was a snake at first.

Here's Serenity walking up the mountain. Very beautiful forest...and this day it was much cooler..perfect for hiking.

Here's me, same trail.


And here are some leftover pics from Fukuoka City...

Serenity went shopping one day and took this...this is the bay, probably the Sea of Japan out there.

This is a clock...and a fountain. There are rows of little fountains, and certain fountains spray more water than others so from across the street you can tell the time. It was, in fact, 1:03 p.m.!
(and yes, those are statues of little kids peeing in the fountain!)

This is the moat guarding an old castle (no longer really there) in Fukuoka. Covered in big lillies.)

It was raining that day, and the lillies would catch the drizzle. When enough gathered, the lilly leaf would tilt and the water would drain off. Sometimes it would drain from one leaf onto another, onto another, etc...causing a chain reaction. Very cool.

Another wonder Japanese sign...no need to be fluent. Just watch out for turtles that want to drown you in the moat.

Ruins of the old Fukuoka Castle...dated to 1600s.

Tokyo leftovers

These are some photos Will took while in Tokyo...

This is the moat that surrounds the Imperial Palace...home of the Emperor (you can't get very close to his place)

This is one of the look-out towers at a corner of the moat.

And one of the bridges over the moat...I've seen this same photo in several tourism books since I took it...must be a good place to snap a photo.

This is looking back towards part of the city from one of the entrances to the palace. You're not allowed to walk on the lawn (hence, no shade).

This is one of the guards...I zoomed in.

This is a court building? (I forget now.) It was built in the late 1800s, and the plaque said it survived the huge earthquake in 1923...but was blown up in 1945. Rebuilt in the 50s.


These are views from four sides of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building...one of the taller buildings. You can see that the city just keeps on going...

This first view is looking north.

This is the west view.

Must be south...

And the east view.

This was Shinjuku...part of Tokyo where we were staying.

And a neat sign...no Japanese fluency needed.

Fukuoka City

A couple of weeks ago, the day after the typhoon, we headed to Fukuoka City to see the sights.

(Will wrote this one...you can probably tell from the lack of sense of humor...Serenity is much better at this type of thing.)

Taken from the train, you can see the vast expanse of rice paddies that separate us from the city - it didn't look promising - we thought we might be in for lots of rain.

But although the clouds looked menacing, it turned out to be a perfect day...one of the few that wasn't extremely hot and humid in August.

This is taken from the underground shopping mall that runs a few blocks under Fukuoka City. It's also the transportation hub between the subway and the train station. There are two aisles like this, next to eachother. Very easy to get turned around in any shopping mall.

This is looking at the heart of Fukuoka City on the Nakagawa (Naka River).

And this is us--same spot! Nice lady offered to take picture for us.

This is taken on the same river, but from the other end looking the opposite way...standing near the red and white signs in the center of the other photo.
This was called Canal City, which was basically a big shopping mall (very big...maybe five or six floors and dozens of restaurants. You can see there is still some traditional architecture throughout these cities, no matter where you are or how modern it is. This area had old homes/buildings next to the river.

This is some crazy prize. We think it's a hat. There was an entire store of the classic "move the claw around and try to grab a prize and drop it in the hole." You know, the kind that you never win...

But when we saw the stuffed turnips(?), we had to try. Threw six bucks down the tube trying to get one of these god-awful things.

Found a moment to rest in Canal city. We'd been walking all day...and this just happened to be right next to the "Desert Museum." Talk about lots of sweets...ice cream, crepes, just about anything you can think of. Pretty nice. We had a hard time deciding.

This was the crepe store in the Desert Museum that Serenity got a blackberry and ice cream filled crepe. As you can see, on the left you have a nice "bannana and ice cream/chocolate crepe," right next to the ever-popular "pizza sauce, cream cheese and tuna crepe." The Desert Museum lost my respect after trying to pass that off as desert. I found a nice "blood orange" sherbert instead.

This was looking down just some random alley in the city. Serenity liked the very small, old building among the high-rises.

This was a zen-garden type shrine...pretty common to find these stuck here and there in cities. This one was a nice moment of respite from a day of walking on pavement. Nice big coy fish in the pond, waterfalls, lots of little bonsai trees, pagodas and benches. Nice old man let us in right before closing time. It was free, too.

This was a "turtle pond" next to the gardens at a Shinto Shrine. There were dozens of these turtles in there, and they swarmed to you when you came up to the side of the pond, waiting for food and sticking their heads up at you.
There was another guy next to us, and a turtle crawled out of the pond and just kept crawling towards the guy. He literally had to move out of the way - this turtle must have been hungry. I had never seen a turtle chase someone before...

This is one end of the yatai stalls along the river. At dusk, these little wooden huts open up and serve ramen bowls and beer. Everyone shouts at you (no idea what they were saying) trying to convince you to sit at their stall (there must have been 15 stalls, at least).

This is the stall we choose, looking from our seat. We had ramen, and some other ambiguous looking meat-substance type things. (It's very hard to describe food here--most of the time I haven't the slightest clue what it is. It's often hard to guess if it's an animal or plant.)

Our stall - you can see the food in boiling fishy-smelling water...hard boiled eggs, fat-on-a-stick, other mysterious stuff. And what's that? - That guy sitting and eating there...why, it's a non-Japanese person! Very rare!

Our cook tossing something and frying something and straining something. They were busy guys...one to cook, one to wash plates, one to take orders...and one to stand in front and yell unintelligible Japanese.

Next post...the huge 14-inch purple earthworm-looking worm/snake thing!!!