KKR Hotel Hakata Fukuoka

My first impression of Fukuoka was neon. Though my body knew it was the middle of the night it was used to, I was able to get yen from an ATM, buy a subway ticket, and get to the 100 year old inn where I had reservations. Enjoyed the hot communal (gender separated) bath, but not as much the ********** and buckwheat pillow.
Fukuoka, Kyushu-Okinawa, Japan travlingal

... like? I have no friggin' idea. I've been trying to research it on the internet but have come up with very little as to what kind of life we'll be living there. Which is one of the reasons I've decided to revive the travel blog and maybe somewhere down the line, someone else is moving to Salalah and will actually have some idea of what it's like before they get there. Here's hoping it's good!

-M

... with Hello Kitty ROBO. Pretty cute. But for the $1000 price tag I could buy a lot of 'cute' in the red light district!

Next, the AIBO collection caught my eye. Several generations of the lovable little robot dog by SONY were obediently seated on a matrix of shelves. If you've seen an AIBO it's probably been one of the futuristic looking shiny silver, black, or white ones. I was surprised to see a more "natural" looking beige pup from 2003, the AIBO ERS-311, but I ...

... 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 ...

... the other stuff was!! But glad we did as it was the best noodle soup we have had all trip. Then we decided to be brave and order some other little bits - Rob ordered some chicken skewers, which although this is what it was, we had no idea what part of the chicken it was from as it was hard and crunchy!!!! Lesley then pointed at a few things that could not be identified but thought it might be ...

... pied, nous sommes allés manger dans un restaurant   un peu plus cher qu'ailleurs, sur la rue principale. Mais bon, leur Katsudon était TRÈS bon! Ensuite, pour faire passer le tout, nous sommes partis à la recherche de petits temples cachés ici et là dans la ville. Il s'agissait de suivre la ligne rouge-orange sur la carte (que je vais ajouter) et il y en avait plusieurs. Nous sommes allés voir le Hie Shrine et ensuite le Temple Bouddhiste Kaidanin. (sur la carte, ces endroits sont ...

... bullet train) which takes about 6 hours to Tokyo but instead take 11 different trains with a journey time of 27 hours. The day ended with a 4 hour stopover in a train station car park waiting for the station to open again, the following morning.

... dinner we had some strange tofu-sesame thing which was so hard to eat, imagine trying to pick up big lumps of jelly with chopsticks and you're getting close! We had a good explore around Koya which is pretty small and walked through the graveyard. It's huge, hidden away in the forests on the side of the mountain, the path way through leads to more temples and shrines. When we reached ...

... up melancholy. He headed inside and I stayed up on deck. I stared out at the sea for a long time, thinking about all the possible paths before me and which one I should take now that the road that I was on no longer seemed like the right one. I wrote a few things in my notebook: "I recognize a lot of 'woe is me' and not a lot of action." I was thinking about being lonely here, and it occurred to me that I had hardly even tried to alleviate that. I could've hung around outside of the ...

... because the family consisted of a 36 year old man, a 32 year old woman, with three small children. Given the city centre location of the accomodation, I did not think of it being anything else than cramped. A horid thought prior to my arrival. But, oh, what a surprise. It was a modern two storey stand alone house, with at least 8 rooms, 2 bath rooms and a tiny kitchen. I was allocated to a 25 sqm room which I had to myself ...