Days 2 and 3

Whew! what a rush and I haven't even finished my first week. I have to say that its going to be tough for me but I am learning a lot. It may be because its hard for me to be placed on the spot. But thats good for me. Well, I'm having fun.

We did a lot with structure and the vocabulary keeps building. Plus they want us to speak only in Japanese when we are at school. This makes it tough for some, but I feel a necessity if you want to learn by total immersion. I must sound retarded sometimes, but the staff there is great. They always find a way to help you with a smile and encouragement. The school is great. We met more teachers which, for me, helps me in my listening skills on different ways the language can be spoken. The ones that are very energetic are Mika and Chihomi. They make it real fun. Yujii is fun too, he's quite young but very knowledgeable. On tuesday after classes, we went on a tour of Tenjin, the main city of Fukuoka. We walked and rode the 100 yen loop bus. We visited a very cool temple. What's cool is the giant Buddha that's at least 2 stories high. No pictures can be taken. But I did take others that they let me. Forgive me on posting pics, i'm having trouble inserting them where i want so I'll post them with a comment, maybe.

We also visited a shrine. I forgot the names. A lot of people were around making their year end wishes, but our guide, Taka-san, said New Years will be the busiest. I forgot to mention, I met another student cause she came along for the tour. She's a week ahead of me. Maria from Italy. She'll be here for 7 weeks, too. It made me think, when my current classmates leave after 3 weeks, will I be alone? Oh well. After feeling spiritual, we decided to go to two shopping areas. One was the Hakata Kilometer Shopping street. Like it says it's kilometer long and it's like an indoor swap meet. The other was the Canal City. Very cool place.

This is a 6 level mall that's shaped like an open auditorium facing the canal by the city. Near the canal are the yatai's that Fukuoka is known for. These are street cart mini restaurants serving mostly yakitori and ramen, but there were other foods. All of them are crowded so you usually eat standing up. Delicious and cheap. The pics I took are cool, but I'm going to revisit during the day because the flash did not help to light up the area. They had this one place we went to where you get a group of people to take a picture and then you can draw on it and stuff. Funny. They had a room with costumes wherer you can dress up as anime characters. Kind of kinky if you saw the costumes.

Finally we went back to school and then a few of us had dinner at a place called Gusto's. My way of describing it is Western food made Japanese style. Very good. Here's the pics.


This is the wish tree

The monks each get a statue

I was bad and took a picture inside. I didn't know until the monk told me.


The monk is ringing the giant bell

That's Taka-san washing his hands the way you're supposed to at the shrine.