During my last few days in Europe I had really started looking forward to coming back to Japan, what a relief ;-). Reuniting with my husband proved powerful enough to make me temporarily forget all what had been left behind -loads of wonderful people & a few culinary favourites (what can I say, I love western food!). Our long-awaited moments of romantic bliss were rudely disturbed after 4 days though by a thing called Real Life, damn... It reminded us that we each have a mountain of university work to get through, in my case mostly because I ignored my studies completely in Belgium. Oops... In moments of sheer panic I now desperately regret this lack of planning, but what can you do except plough on and have the occasional moan? Anyway, my first weekend was luckily still spent in near-perfect bliss, with our first visit to the Fukuoka Baseball Dome and a relaxing trip to the Itoshima coast on Sunday. I should savour this memory, as the next 10 days will allow little time for being idle. Ganbarre!
The Fukuoka Hawks supporters don't take baseball lightly, with each player having his individual song -& dance ritual, executed perfectly by thousands of fans at the same time. It seemed all very regulated and rehearsed, very different from the brazen, spontaneous chaos you find in our soccer stands. Pretty impressive to watch!
Yukino & her sister Akino were really getting in on the action, using the 'clappers' profusely and joining in on all the neatly-choreographed dances. My mission for next time is to learn some of these moves, oh dear...
The Hawks ended up losing 4-5 to the Kansai team, but we had a fun afternoon nonetheless.
Vaughan at our beach of choice in Itoshima, which only took a subway, a 45-minute wait, a lot of confusion, a busride and a walk to get to. Nothing comes easy in a country where you don't speak the language!
Cheesy huh :-)?
Energized by the smell of the ocean & the non-sticky weather!
The 'West Blue' cafe right near the beach, where we spent several hours just chilling. Or to paraphrase their business card: "Happiest time is that there is a delicious dish, looking at the blue sea with a good friends". Ok...
Walking through inaka (countryside) on our way back to the bus stop
5 comments:
Bar the nice weather & beach your inaka is pretty much the sort of place I was living. I'm sure bearing that in mind (& the fact I was way (30 mins by car) from the train line why my experiences in Nihon were at times, shall we say, rather coloured.
PS Sorry I hate Japanese baseball. Boring & way too conformist. Give me footbal or sumo any day!
PPS Mr Curd, how you doing? How's the thesis going? Oh, & what exactly are you doing as your topic?
Hey Brett, both Vaughan & I are swamped with assignments at the moment so it's very unlikely that he'll write you any time soon (no surprises there huh!). He's actually doing his Master in Applied Linguistics through papers and isn't writing a thesis; maybe that would have been too challenging from Japan. Karen (V's mum) is also arriving next Saturday so it'll be good to get some Kiwi news firsthand :-). Will write when I get the time!
Ta Inge. Give Vaughan my best & tell him that he's probably made a good choice as he's overseas. Still he could have had a chance for some great research.
As for yourself, good luck; I'm sure you'll do well.
I'm on 'holiday' for the next 4 weeks to do some writing for my thesis but will be in to check my e-mails etc often.
Okaeri m(- -)m
Oh, I recognize that beach!!!
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