Tag: Aquarium

Friendly Fukuoka – First Week

Hello everyone!

I am starting a new series on this blog about my life as an exchange student in Japan. I joined the JTW Program of Kyushu University in Fukuoka. I will stay here for ten months to study (and party ;)). I wanted to start this series mostly to let everyone at home know what I am doing here. But I hope that I can inform my international readers about the fun and fabulous Fukuoka. And I can use it in one of the classes that I intend to attend which requires to keep some kind of diary about my life here. Now that’s what I call three birds with one stone! I am calling this series Friendly Fukuoka because the people in Fukuoka are known to be very nice people and until now it has proven to be true 🙂

So I took a direct plane by KLM from Amsterdam to Fukuoka on the 22nd of September. Ten hours later I landed in Fukuoka Airport in the morning. My first challenge was to catch a taxi to Hakata station to go to my hotel. There were different kinds of categories, like deluxe and standard taxis, so I was kind of confused which one to take. But I ended up fine and well at my hotel near Gion station for a reasonable fee. It was way too early to check in so I just left my luggage and went to the shopping malls around the station. This was not the best idea ever because I already bought some things within an hour of being in Japan. After a few hours of wandering around and having a drink in a cafe I could finally check in at the hotel. Now I was hoping to take a rest and get ready for dinner but I couldn’t get my suitcase to open! I spent an hour trying different ways to open the lock and in the end I just tried every single code possible from 000 to 999. Luckily it opened somewhere in the 200’s.

I then had to rush to get ready because my lovely Japanese friend came to pick me up for dinner with a few of her friends. We went to an izakaya which is a Japanese kind of bar where you can get some drinks along with a range of small dishes. We had things like yakitori, sashimi, pizza, salad and more. The nice thing about these small dishes is that you can try a lot of different foods. It was really nice to meet an old friend and make new friends on the first day because I immediately felt like I belonged here and didn’t feel lonely at all. I also got to drink some wonderful umeshu again, which is a sweet plum wine and I absolutely love it. But I hadn’t had sleep for more than 30 hours and had a small jetlag so soon I grew tired and speaking Japanese after a break of almost four months was a little bit of a challenge. One of the friends, another old friend of mine, was late and came when we were just leaving. He has a car so he brought us home by car, so nice. I had a lovely first evening and these nice people set the tone for the rest of my stay in Fukuoka.

The next day I met my Japanese friend again when she picked my up at the hotel to move my luggage to the dorm. I was finally moving in! I had to fill in a lot of documents and then had to check my room for abnormalities. Besides a moldy fridge and a chair that’s had it’s best years my room is fine. There is a lot of closet space and I have my own tiny bathroom, which is really convenient. There is a desk and a bed where I sleep on with a futon, Japanese style! It’s a very boring room but slowly but surely I am decorating and filling it with things I bought at the hundred yen shop. Those shops are awesome; you can find almost anything and everything costs maybe about 0,80 euro cents. So I ended up with a lot of useful and cheap things. Going there is a little bit addictive though because everyday I think of something that I need and then I go there and come back with a bag full of things.

This is also the day that I met my tutor. She is a sweet girl who will help me with all kinds of difficult things like paying bills at the post office, getting a phone or registering at the ward office. I had plans to meet up with my friend from Belgium who was traveling through Japan and was in Fukuoka at that moment. My tutor helped me to go the place where we would meet, the aquarium! Marine World is an aquarium in the suburbs of Fukuoka, about an hour away from Hakata station. When my friend arrived we said goodbye to my tutor and went to the aquarium. It was not the biggest or most beautiful aquarium I have seen but it was fun. Sadly I forgot my camera so I had to make do with my iPhone.

We first ate something in the restaurant from where we could see the dolphins. And then we watched all the fish, penguins and sea lions. The seals were so cute! They kept looking at us and swimming towards us, such curious animals. And we could also feed them 🙂 We then went to my friend’s hotel to take a shower (because it’s so hot and humid here) and dress up. We met the Japanese friend who helped me with moving in the morning, and another old friend of ours. We had another night of drinking and eating delicious food at an izakaya. Really, the food and drinks are great and there is so much variety, so you can never get enough of izakaya. It was nice to meet them again and catch up. The Japanese girls had to work the next day though, so we said goodbye to them after going to the subway station through the pouring rain. And we went to karaoke until end the night with some singing. Because I mean, we’re in Japan after all.

I stayed at my friend’s hotel where we talked until deep in the night, or morning, and had to get up at 10am to go back to my dorm. There we had to gather with a group of about 15 students and a few tutors who would help us to apply for residence cards and register our addresses at the ward office of Hakata. This was the first time meeting some of my classmates and we had to wait very long at the ward office so it was a nice opportunity to chat with them and get to know them. They are all awesome and sweet people and I know I’ve already made some friends for life. After the whole thing was finally finished I made some plans with my classmates to meet up in the evening and eat together.  I then went to meet my Belgian friend one last time before she would leave for Okinawa (and after that back to Belgium). We ate some cake at the hotel restaurant and took purikura (photo stickers) at an arcade hall. Time was quickly running out and I had to say goodbye to her. When I came back to the dorm I bumped into a friend from my university back home. She’s staying at the same dorm and uni, but is in a different program. I invited her to dinner with my classmates. We all went to a shopping mall near the dorm and ended up eating soba noodles in a restaurant there. It was nice to have some more bonding time with them and I think by then we were already friends haha.

On the friday I went shopping at the hundred yen store with my new friends, because we all needed some essential things like cutlery, cups, bowls, dust bins and what not. We also took a quick look in the arcade hall there and took purikura. We had to hurry back though because in the afternoon we had orientation day at the university. Basically it is just a lot of information being told in a few hours. It was tiring but important. And because we all don’t like to be alone we went to dinner again with a big group. This time there were even more people than the day before, some who I hadn’t met yet and there were also some of the tutors going with us. We went to kaitenzushi, which is basically sushi in fastfood form. A conveyer belt runs along the tables and on this band theres all kind of sushi which you can take from the belt. You pay by the amount of plates you have. It’s quite cheap, about 100 yen per plate and there’s vegetarian options too.

The saturday was a day off before our Orientation trip around Kyushu in the weekend. The girls and I went to Hakata in the afternoon for some more shopping. I needed some things from the electronics store and we also went to the hundred yen shop again because the one at Hakata station has a bigger collection than the one near our dorm. We also bought snacks for the weekend trip there. We also played some games at the arcade hall on the top floor of the electronics store. The electronics store we went to is Yodobashi Camera and it is huge! You can find almost anything there. So I usually go there when I need something for my computer, camera or mobile phone. The collection of iPhone 5 cases is the most extended one I’ve seen so far, so I have bought a pretty Japanese iPhone case. In the evening we met op with Carol and went to eat at the top floor of the station’s shopping mall. The restaurants there looked so nice, but the prices were too high. We ended up in a ramen restaurant where the prices were very reasonable. I tried tonkotsu ramen which is a specialty of Fukuoka. It was super delicious and I can recommend it to anyone!

That’s it for the first week ! I wil tell you about my orientation trip and the rest of this week in my next blog 🙂

Japan Trip Day Two, Kaiyukan Aquarium Osaka

Our first full day in Osaka was spent at the Kaiyukan aquarium and in the Umeda district.
I just love visiting zoos and aquariums! And Kaiyukan was no exception. The place is divided in the different seas of the world and the animals living there. The great thing is that it wasn’t limited to fish but there were also some cute penguins and mammals like monkeys and capybara which are cute huge hamsters. But Kaiyukan is most famous for the whale sharks. When I saw them is was amazed, they are huge and beautiful. It’s a pity they are stuck in a tank. But it is a few stories high, so that’s a good thing. And the design of the building is great because all the floors are centered around the tank with the whale sharks so you can view them from different places. The exterior of the building is horribly ugly though. But at least you can’t miss it.

I don’t know how I was able to take this picture, but it looks cool right? Like the turtle is flying in front of me.

So Japan is known for the cute culture right? The Japanese name for this is ‘kawaii’ and there are many different kinds of kawaii but you can bet ya that almost anything in Japan is related to kawaii in some way. Kaiyukan couldn’t miss out on this surely, so there was a ‘kawaii collection’ at the aquarium. It seemed like a temporary collection of fishes, but I am not sure. Basically it was a collection of small and colorful fishes, and yes, they were cute indeed.

I loved this little one. He would pop out his head from his home once in a while.

After the aquarium we did little bit of shopping at a nearby small shopping mall with a great clothing shop and a 100-yen shop (so many cheap things!). And we took our first purikura, a cute photo sticker. I really miss purikura and can’t wait to take them again this September. Not only is it kawaii,  it is also fun to do and you can let out your creative side. Plus it is a great commemorative! You can even give yourself fake make-up, a new hair color or you can put on some cartoonish eyes and bunny ears. At some point during our trip we started making really weird purikura, but those are the best kind 🙂

Our next stop was Umeda for HEP Five. It is a big Japanese shopping mall with a whole bunch of girly clothing shops. This is when something interesting happened. One of my friend wanted to try on some clothes in on of the shops. They usually sell one-size clothing and for us western girls we really don’t trust them, because one size doesn’t fit all. But the shop staff girl was making a fuss and was saying all kinds of things in Japanese and we just didn’t understand. Then she pulled out this big card with pictures on it and English descriptions and a list of sentences. She pointed at a sentence and we understood that we couldn’t fit the clothes because make-up could get on it. I was just amazed by the fact that they have a card like that and it’s the first time I ever saw it. And I haven’t seen it since.

There are not just shops in HEP Five, on top of the building there’s also a Ferris Wheel. I imagined the view would be amazing and wanted to ride it. It was a little bit scary but cool. The view would have been amazing if it hadn’t rained and wasn’t as cloudy. But the rain on the windows added some charm to the pictures in my opinion.

Photo not by me

Shopping this much makes you hungry, so after you have made your way up the building through all the shops there are conveniently placed restaurant in the top floor. We were also hungry at this point and it was time for dinner. We chose a family restaurant on the top floor where we had tonkatsu-don with kimchi. This portion was so big that we thought we had ordered for two, but it turned out it was for one person. But we shared anyway. And it was delicious! After that day tonkatsu turned into my favorite Japanese food (together with okonomiyaki later) and is a great combination with curry.

Back in our room our beds were already made for us, heavenly! But first we enjoyed some tea and snacks (they refilled our snack box for us, it doesn’t get any better than this), while checking our buys of the day and writing in our dairies. We both like to keep a travel diary, so we are great travel buddies. Instead of partying or going out we like to take a rest in the evening and watch some tv or chat while writing our diaries.

Our hotel was next to Dotonbori street, a nice are to explore before heading back to our hotel.

Notes;

  • Japan has a lack of public benches and trash cans.
  • Japan does everything cute, even their fishes (see kawaii collection at Kaiyukan)
  • Foreigners are still very ‘foreign’ in Osaka despite being a huge city and we got stared at a lot. Sometimes to the point where we felt very uncomfortable (because of people turning their heads or taking photos of us).
  • Fitting clothes in Japan is not as common as back home and is a huge fuss
  • Japanese shops are opened until late (in comparison to the Netherlands)
  • Purikura is awesome
  • Tourist traps in Japan come in the form if obligatory photos at famous places. Before you enter or after you exit they will take a picture of you (usually forcibly) and try to sell it to you. This was the only tourist trap we encountered though.