There and back again

Having two varieties of currency in your wallet produces a wonderful in-betweeny feeling, especially when neither of them is the Canadian dollar. I was in Fukuoka for 30 hours, and I walked so much that I got blisters on my feet, which is no small feat because I walk a lot. Most of this walking was intentional: I wanted to see as much of the city as possible; about 3 hours of this walking was accidental: I was lost. Well, not lost in the sense that I didn't know where I was (I did), I just couldn't find my hotel.

My boss made the reservation for me, but the address was in Korean characters, so I asked Matt (who had stayed at the same hotel) where it was, and he said just outside such-and-such subway station. Unfortunately, such-and-such subway station turned out to be not so much such-and-such, and more such-and-a-completely-different station, 10km away. After I had methodically scoured a scientifically-determined radius (yes, I know how to have a good time) around the wrong subway station, I asked crosswalk-waiting captive for directions. The crosswalk (complete with a no walking light) was only for a single-lane street, and no cars were coming, yet he didn't jaywalk. After I understood that I should go to the Tenjin subway station, I thanked him, and unthinkingly jaywalked across the tiny street, oops. Tenjin station also turned out to be the wrong station. However, it had a gigantic underground labyrinth of sun-free European shopping streets. Fortunately, what they lacked in authenticity they made up for in detailed maps. On one such map I found a purple dot that said "tourist information," which turned out to be a travel agency. The exceedingly polite and helpful person there directly me to the correct subway station, and even drew me a map that showed which of the 17 exits I should take.

My general impression of Japan, or at least Fukuoka, was that it is very clean, beautiful, polite, organized and fond of cartoon characters. Everything went smoothly at the Korean consulate, so I am now legally entitled to work in Korea, which is probably a good thing. I liked the beach a lot, even though it was raining most of the time. As a matter of fact, I still have sand in the rolled-up cuffs of my corduroys.

There were a few neat technological things, like the automatic pants-pressing machine and the bidet at the hotel, and the ridiculously easy-to-use subway system. But it wasn't as excessively futuristic as I had expected. Tokyo probably has more of that. There was a neat arcade-type place, though. It had about 40 of those crane games--you know, the ones where you guide a claw-crane thing and try to snatch various shiny prizes. Curiously, this was combined with several rows of slot machines and other gambling things. Most importantly, they had a legit arcade version of Mariokart, with tons of stuff not found in the console versions.

The castle ruins I visited were even more historically profound than Mariokart. Although, in comparison to some of the stuff I saw in China, they paled a bit. But it's always neat to see really old stone structures, I guess. I prefered the nearby immaculately landscaped park. It surrounded a small lake, and there was a chain of bridges and small islands that divided the lake in two. There were many small birds, heron, and even a special island with a tree for some other large birds (hawks of some kind, maybe, since they seemed to be the official bird of Fukuoka). Also, they had those large orange, white or gold fish that you see in paintings. They were big. They lurked peacefully.

So there's a spliced-together package of my brief trip to Japan. I think I will remember it as flowery, polite and soothing: kind of like Scarlett Johannsen's day-trip to the temple in Lost in Translation, I'd like to say.

The photos

P.S. I was accepted to the UBC-Okanagan education program, which was my second choice. I should hear from SFU within the month.