Evergreen Marinoa Hotel Fukuoka

... The next morning I wandered the side streets and lanes, and found myself at Yusida Shrine, welcomed by a Nandi on the left (later learned there is also a sacred cow/patron god in Shinto)

Then to the blast of the main streets, and ticket on to Yufuin. (I fly out of FUK, so will explore more of the city when I return).

Here we go again, off to lands unknown (to us, anyway) with our lives stuffed into luggage. The last time we do this will not be too soon! I suppose it's the price of an adventurous lifestyle.

Speaking of which, we are currently in Nogata, Fukuoka which is probably the *least* adventurous town ever. It consists of rice fields and... rice fields. My grandparents live here though, and it's also where we ...

... telephone. Ten years ago this was hi-tech, state of the art stuff.

Built one year later, TMSUK-04 is a humanoid super-remote-controlled robot with a head, arms, and tracks. She sorta reminded me of Dot Matrix from the movie Spaceballs, but without legs.

I checked out some other display robots, including BANRYU, and Wall-E, then finally actually went inside the "square"...

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ROBOSQUARE FACILITY:

A group of young Japanese women were excitedly ...

... s support--it's suffered from decline from its glory days as a cruise ship port, and there has been a major investment in public improvements. It probably needs a few factory outlet stores to fill up some of the remaining vacant old buildings. But even as-is, this is a community that deserves a visit!

I did not have time to visit Cha Cha Town, a shopping center in Kokura, another community that's part of ...

... me a bit of that long-neglected hit by Reparata and the Delrons, "Saturday Night Didn't Happen."

Tomorrow is my big hike--I am taking the train to Arita and walking to Hasami, which should be about an hour's walk, maybe longer. Thanks to computer mapping, I have a good map of the route, including the locations of convenience stores along the way. Hasami is a town where there's a company, Hakusan, that makes pottery in modern designs ...

... to try, but even after eating we knew it was fish but that was as far as it went!! One of the Japanese eating at the stall offered us some of his gyoza (little parcels of chicken) and we enjoyed it so much that we ordered some of our own - we weren't expecting about 10!!! Absolutely stuffed and it ended up being the most expensive meal in Japan, ironic as it was a street stall, but the ...

... the boat and that's that. Once we were outside the Fukuoka ferry terminal, we hopped in a cab to our hotel. The meter started at 500 yen, which I thought was a mistake, since that's $5.00 US, but turns out, it wasn't a mistake, but that cabs in Japan are astronomically expensive. In the end it cost $30 US to get to our hotel, which was within walking distance of the ferry terminal. Unfortunately, we had luggage, it was July in ...

... Oh, and you get to travel at 280km an hour for 3 hours. Not that any of that, the excitement of a first Shinkansen trip OR the 12 hours of sleep the night before was enough to keep Meg awake. Of course not. This is public transport after all. Frightfully expensive public transport, but public transport nonetheless. Having arrived in Kyoto I got reacquainted with the super efficient ITCJ (International Tourist Centre of Japan) who ...

... for the wanton destruction of their lands. Japan just sort of sulked in its own misery and worked on the latest technology for building dependable cars in the 1970s. This has created a lot of tension between Japan and Korea, and the people still hold these grudges. According to my boss, it's only been recently that the Japanese have warmed up to the Koreans and started traveling there (it's only a 3 hour boat ride away). The reason for the ...

... E 20, and homestay food and lunch. I do not expect to exceed this amount during the next 2 weeks, but during the 4 days in Tokyo I will definitely exceed this amount, but I am expecting to receive about E 400 back from the bank. Also, I plan to buy some interesting books on Japan and for my Japanese studies that are not available in Germany. Please let me know ...