October 4th

Despite the danger of an incoming typhoon, today was the perfect day for a beach trip. Some friends I expected to see didn’t show, and some I didn’t expect were there anyway. It was the perfect thing to uplift my spirits. I’ve been thinking about the experience for a few days now; instead of just doing a journal entry, I was writing creatively about it while being bored on the first day of one of my classes (when all the professor was doing was explaining exactly what he put on the syllabus, which he gave to us anyway. I should have probably paid more attention, but I found my mind wandering, and decided to at least give it a productive outlet).

The writing is incomplete, and will probably remain that way. My mind’s inspiration has always been fleeting, and it doesn’t tend to go back to topics. Sooo yeah, have a thing with words and stuff.

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Whipping, in most cases, is painful and filled with memories of tantrums, hurt feelings, and childish spats. Here, it swirled with salt and mist, clear whiffs, puffs of cool, rushing water. The whipping wind, not quite an annoyance nor convenient, simply was: it existed defiantly, dancing with long hair and brilliant beach skirts. It was the wind that caused my skin to redden, stealing the sun’s glory; the sand, shavings of ancient rocks and surreal mountains, seen now only in faded paintings and wild imaginations, fought to avenge its home, assaulting those that dared to tread on it. Wind picked up the tan warriors, catapulting them against our bare legs and faces.

The deafening sound of the unseen typhoon was both ominous and glorious. White crests pushed and pulled at our footholds, changing and re-changing the scenery around us. The ritualistic dance seemed formal in nature; the flippant glance would see a dull exchange of sand and water, white on blue.

I felt the sand beneath me fighting the current, sticking to my pale feet like stubborn mud. I felt the water rush unexpectedly, the cresting emerging here and there as it pleased, mastered not by pattern nor wind – even gravity seemed to hold little power over such great a force. Monotony and ritual had no place here; the water was captivating beyond means of words. Awe, fear, respect, purity, glory, joy, music – these each had found and ground their places into the spray that causes us to jump back, gleefully laughing, our cheeks sore for hours from our symbolic expressions that screamed “vacation.”

Part of my skin shifted against the current, the only inclination that something was amiss. A small, crab-like creature clung to the top of my left foot, its journey to land nearly at an end. Its size made intimidation impossible – improbable, really – for it stood as merely a freckle shifting in my gaze. A mere flick of my ankle sent it back into the ocean, putting it once again at the mercy of the water.

October 3rd

The only thing planned for today was dinner with my tutor. Easy enough: meet her in the lobby at 6:30, eat in the cafeteria, and then go to bed.

Somehow, she showed up, I completely missed her, and I feel terrible about it. I still don’t know what happened; I haven’t been able to contact her to apologize, though I hope we can reschedule.

Basically, if I don’t at least get out and do something tomorrow, I’m going to go crazy.

I miss my brother.

I miss my friends.

I miss being comfortable enough to just ask, “Hey, you wanna do something today?” Logically, I realize that isn’t hard to say – it’s actually a pretty basic sentence, and it even includes some dialect in there. Not too difficult, yeah?

Nope. I still can’t say it to anyone. I have to wait for an invitation to do something. And I hate that. I hate being awkward and anxious and panicky. I hate not trusting other people or myself. I hate that I always think people don’t like me. I hate feeling so down all the time.

Part of it is probably homesickness, but it’s not necessarily due to me being in a different country. It’s because I have no close friends here. I want to get out and try new foods. I want to explore and get lost. I want to meet new people and laugh about stupid things.

My depression has come back. To say it has inconvenient timing would simply be labelling the nature of the beast. If I don’t do something about this soon – anything – I’ll end up worse than ever.

October 2nd

There was an opening ceremony at the Ito campus today. My only regret is bringing a dress as formal wear. It did remind me of a lovely wedding I attended, but my god do I wish I had worn pants.

The campus itself was gorgeous and enormous. The food wasn’t too bad, and it was equipped with its own conbini and in-campus transportation. Sadly, the community around the campus is still in the making, so there wouldn’t be much to do around there even if it was used for JTW students.

Beyond that, I don’t remember anything really exciting happening. Sooooo, here: have a tour of my room. Yaaaaaaayyyyy.

My lovely front door, with some nice shoes in front of it. All fancy and junk, I know. When entering the room, directly to your left is this little thing, which currently doesn’t smell too nice cause of these bad boys and the rain. To your right, there is a set of three wardrobes: the first one is relatively empty, besides some gifts from Ohio and some FUCKING USELESS COINS SENT FROM HELL (1 yen and 5 yen coins – everyone’s future gifts from Japan cause THERE’S NO OTHER FREAKING USE FOR THESE FUCKING THINGS); the second one contains what I THOUGHT would be enough clothing for Japan; the third basically just contains my suitcase and some other random junk, where the drawers beneath it hold my bathroom supplies.

Which brings me to the lovely bathroom! Complete with my own toilet, sink, and shower/tub! And that was all directly in front of the third wardrobe.

Next to the third wardrobe is my very own fridge/freezer, which currently holds basically nothing. Aaaannnnddd then there’s my messy desk, my incorrectly made futon, and a little drawer thing next to it that holds most of what I own. Yay!!!

So that’s the layout of my room. Nothing fancy, but it works for me. It’s usually neater than this, bbbbuuuuutttt I was lazy today.

October 1st

This was the night of Tenjin. I don’t honestly remember most of what happened during the day, since the days blur together here. However, I do remember the night party that one of the tutors led us to. So was also there, and it was nice to see him again.

Basically, we all crowded on a bus together and headed to Tenjin. If I thought the area near Rupo was crowded, I was quickly corrected; there were so many people in Tenjin. The buildings were stuffed together, towering over us. The night lights were gorgeous, though it was difficult to see through the crowd.

And so, it came to pass that night that the one called Jennie, founder of the Fukuoka Experience blog, experienced her first umeshu. The world has changed since then; no one knows how or why, but it has changed, and for the better.

Basically, I got drunk. If you want any more details, they’re considered at least slightly private, but feel free to message me on Facebook. Just know that everyone made it back home safely and securely, and no one did anything stupid.

Oh, and I ate chicken giblets.

September 30th

Another early start, another exhausting day. Some friends met me for breakfast, and we started off for the Ward office pretty early with a group. Basically, we had to get a receipt for our residence card so we could open a bank account. So, we did.

After that, around 1 pm, there was another orientation we had to go to. This time, it was for all of the international students, not just the JTW program. A few bits and pieces were interesting and useful, but, if I wasn’t such a light sleeper, I would have been completely out of it.

We all ran to the local conbini after orientation to get copies of our receipts and passport pages. That caused us to be a little late to the bank event, so they had already run out of applications. So another half hour wait, and we filled out our applications – completely wrong, that is.

At around 7, we were all finally done, and back at the dorm. I happened to wander downstairs, and was invited to go out with Rei, Ryan, and Andrew. And so the fun finally began.

We all headed to Hakata station, which is basically a train station with the equivalent of about 5 shopping malls on top of it. Seriously, floors and floors of just random stuff. There was a Pokemon Center – which we still haven’t visited – and an entire floor that is just an arcade. Andrew ended up winning a very nice figurine at one of the machines (the items are held up with a string, and you have to cut it with a razorblade), we all played Mario Kart, and we laughed at some of the coin machines (you put the money in, turn the thingy, and a ball pops out with what you got; it’s common in the US as well, I just don’t know what they’re called). I’m still baffled at the price of some of the machines. I considered getting a sushi cat one, but one go was ¥400. For that price, there’d better be real sushi and a real cat coming out of that machine! There was another cheaper cat one, but they were all puking the word nyan out, posed in different ways. Japan, I shake my head at you sometimes.

We had tried to find an electric store so one of us could get a LAN cable, but failed. Instead, we went to a cheap restaurant and had a good dinner, laughing at ridiculous things and explaining how we viewed each other (like, I told Rei she had the personality that made everyone laugh, and that sort of stuff).

Rei had to go to the Ward Office since she hadn’t been yet, and Ryan was going to meet his tutor in the morning, so we all made plans for getting together tomorrow morning for breakfast. It was an absolutely wonderful day.

September 29th

September 29^th

This was the second, and the last, day of our welcoming trip. Pallock-sensei made sure to remind us of the mountain of deadlines hovering over us all, but it wasn’t going to keep us down for long. We stopped at Daikambo to hike for a bit, but all got distracted by a performing monkey. The videos I got there were amazing, and will definitely be shared. The monkey ended up having a sumo match between him and a Curious George plush. It was by far the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

The hike was nice as well. The dragon flies were all out, whizzing about, showing their lack of modesty. Some posed for us on plant leaves, and two of us got so distracted by them that we missed a group photo. There were plenty more to be had anyway, so it wasn’t all that bad.

We had planned on going up to Mt. Aso, but it was currently leaking poisonous gases.

One of the last things we did was go to Kumamoto castle. The design was absolutely breathtaking. It’s hard to describe what I saw there. All I know is I wouldn’t have missed that trip for the world.

We got back to Fukuoka around 7 o’clock. Some of us wanted to sort out our schedules, but I wasn’t able to stay up for much longer. I welcomed my bed like an old friend, and didn’t part from it for a while.

September 28th

September 28^th

We all had to wake up early for today’s trip. We were headed off to Ryumon Falls, Kokonoe Yume Ootsuribashi, and the Kuju training center. So, a waterfall and some sort of hotel like area. The waterfall was gorgeous; I took so many pictures there that I’ll just upload them all to Facebook instead of attempting to put them in here.

While going to the waterfall, and coming back, we all had to stop and love on a gorgeous ginger cat. We had already discussed how we were planting the geijin flag everywhere we went, but, after this, we knew who we were: the geijin nekos it was, and the mascot had been found.

Lunch, I think, was the highlight of this day. We went to this gorgeous restaurant where we all sat on cushions on the floor, our legs crossed under the table. The food was displayed beautifully. One thing definitely stood out though: the food stared right back at you. There was a whole-cooked fish on each of our plates. I ate a bit of it here and there, and it was delicious. Eventually, I overheard a friend talking about it, and looked over just in time to see her eat the head whole. Rei was sitting next to me, and she was surprised that you could eat the head. So, logically, we decided to try it together. Honestly, it wasn’t bad. It was softer than the other meat, though there was a crunch or two that I don’t like to think about.

We ended up trying to pressure another friend into eating it. He was pretty happy to leave it alone, especially after someone mentioned the eyes were crunchy. I kept telling him he needed to show the fish who’s the boss, to defeat his enemy, but he wasn’t having any of it. Maybe next time peer pressure will win the day.

We also went over the bridge of dreams, which was, according to some sign, taller than the pyramids. It was beautiful, terrifying, and had a great reward of ice cream at the end. I’ve got plenty of photos of that trip for sure.

At the training center, there was a small, but nice, onsen. Most people I knew were rather shy about public bathing. I ended up taking a public bath in private, since no one else went when I did. Afterwards, I went to the gym and watched the others play before we all headed back to either our rooms or the onsen.

The quiet didn’t last for long honestly. By the end of the night, there were at least 20 of us crowded into the small hallway, talking and playing group games. I got to know some people pretty well, and we shared interesting bits about our cultures and whatnot.

This entry is short because I don’t remember much. I didn’t take my laptop with me on the trip, soooo I’m actually writing this in October. Also, most of the pictures can be found on Facebook, and I’m too lazy to transfer them over to here.

September 27th

September 27^th

Today started really early. Just as well though, since I somehow found myself awake at around 6:30. I have no idea what is wrong with me. Well, I had breakfast in the cafeteria (because you need to know EVERYTHING that I do) with a few friends, and met someone named Rosanna. I could look up in the guide book they gave us where she’s from, but I’m lazy and tired soooo nope.

Well, I showed some friends where the hyaku en store was (these were some new people I got to know, so they didn’t go with the large group the day before). Turns out it doesn’t open until around 10 am, so we wandered around the city a bit. We ended up finding a supermarket (yay!!) and a coffee place called “Seattle’s Best.” It was amusing because two of my friends that were there happened to be from Seattle; they explained that no one actually went to Seattle’s Best back home because it really didn’t have that good of coffee. After the hyaku en store adventure was over, we ended up at You Me town, bought a few books, and leached off of the wifi at Starbucks. I managed to contact my mom – poor Mom, she was so worried. I don’t blame her though. Her daughter’s in a whole new country, and I wasn’t even able to tell her I was fine, or that I was making friends, or even if I was happy here.  I’m glad I was finally able to do that today.

Shortly afterwards, we headed back to the dorm. I ran into a few other friends who went shopping to buy bikes – and demanded that they teach me how so I could travel cheaper. They also invited me to dinner; in turn, I invited the few friends I went out with earlier to dinner with us (I didn’t just do this rudely; I was told that I should invite them. Plus, they could help me out with the whole riding the subway thing and getting off at the right stops so I could actually make it to Hakata Station in one piece and on time).

I was supposed to do a walkthrough of my room or something, but I’m just not feeling it right now. Maybe later. Man, I miss the internet.

September 26th

September 26^th

I had my first breakfast in Japan. I didn’t really plan to be up this early; but, here I am, awake at 7 in da mernin. I’ve already bathed, eaten, gotten dressed, and all prepared for the day. I wrote the majority of yesterday’s post today (le gasp!!) and have even started this one. I feel…productive… It’s weird. I’m not a morning person!!

But I digress. Have a picture of my breakfast. LOOK AT IT!!!

Yeah…it’s cereal… No idea what it’s called, but it apparently has chocolate in it somewhere. It’s quite good though. While buying it, I discovered that it’s normal for most European countries to eat something sweet for breakfast; not like sweet cereal, but just sweet things. I mean, it’s almost normal in America I think (jelly and what not), but I just don’t think sweet when I think breakfast. I think hearty, like biscuits with sausage or eggs or some other meat. It confused some of my friends; we’re all learning!

I realize that I haven’t taken pictures of my room yet, so I’ll probably do a walk-through tomorrow or something. I dunno. Now, I should make a list of things to buy/look for. Yay lists!!

Also, I discovered the flash on my camera doesn’t work. No idea why. It freaks out when I even consider trying to use it. Soooo only gonna take pictures in well-lit areas – which, luckily, is the majority of places we go.

I could probably go downstairs and get on the wifi that one of the tutors sets up for us, but that’s a lot of effort just to have to bring my laptop allllll the waaaaayyyy back up using the elevator. So I’ll just wait for the whole wifi for everywhere before posting these blog thingies. I can check my email and Facebook using my iPod down there later and stuffs.

Jam managed to find the way to the hyaku en store, which was AMAZING! We also took purikura, but the pictures are small – I’m not sure if I’ll be able to put them up very well. If any of us had a Japanese cell phone, we could just send the pictures from the booth to our cell, but none of us even have a residence card yet. Not sure if I’ll get a cell phone here or not. It would be really convenient for sure, but it would also take away from my random spending money and stuff.

After shopping, we had to hurry back for orientation. Like always, the people there hate us, and we were forced to introduce ourselves. Why do people do that?

Anyway, you know that accent that you just love so much you have to talk to the person? Like, you don’t care if they look at you and say “Fish with bricks eat potatoes in straw houses,” cause it still just sounds so awesome? Yeah, I’ve discovered that accent. I’m, of course, not going to embarrass myself and say what it is here, bbbuuuuttttt yeah, it’s an awesome accent. Just gonna leave it at that.

Okay. Moving on. Orientation took forever, so a few of us had dinner in the cafeteria. Beef curry isn’t too bad actually; the potato salad here is…interesting at least. It has some sort of raisin in it though. We ended up walking to the 7/11 afterwards (I think either the 7/11 or the conbini is going to be the equivalent to the Berea Walmart for us). We also decided to meet up tomorrow so I could help them find the hyaku en store. Sooooo, yeah.

I won’t make you suffer through all of my selfies (I get bored when I wake up early), buuuttt here are some other pictures.

This was either breakfast or lunch; I can’t really remember. I think it was breakfast though. Basically, a roll and jam from the conbini; except, it isn’t jam (and it wasn’t from the conbini). It’s actual blueberries with a bit of jelly-like stuff around them and junk. It’s hard to explain, but it’s very delicious.

scene scene trees stuff junk roadandshit uuuugggghhhh

That’s all some scenery from on the way to the hyaku en store. It’s very nice really; lots of trees and nice colored grass.

I finally snagged some pictures of my friends! Starting here on the left is Oumrati, who really didn’t want to be in pictures today, and Sasha.

All right, from the left to the right: Heewon, Caroline, Jam, and Aulia. Kelly is in a different program than us, so she didn’t go to orientation at the same time that we did. We’re all on the train to Kyudai here – or on the way back to Chiyo Kenchoguchi station. Either way, we were on the subway going somewhere.

Two things: most of the Japanese people I’ve met have asked me about KFC, and even more of them think my “father” tattoo is hilarious.

Also, WordPress is annoying and difficult and ohmygodihatethiswholebloggingthingsomuch.

September 25th

September 25^th

I may have beaten jet lag, but going to bed early has cost me. Waking up at 8 am was NOT what I had in mind. I missed breakfast – I hadn’t honestly planned on going anyway, though I’ll probably try to go from now on. I have to be somewhere at 1:30 today, but that’s still a while off. So, just like I would normally do, I copied a hermit and stayed in my room. I went downstairs for a drink, and came back to sort out my room, attempting to make it presentable. I’m not quite ready to explore the outside world on my own, though I was tempted to. My Japanese is poor, and being nervous has just made it worse. I’ll get better though.

My god, it is hot here. And humid. Tennessee and Kentucky have NOTHING on Fukuoka.

Here, this is what the view is from my room:

view view view view

My day was to start at 1:30; we were to meet our tutors and head over to the Hakata Ward Office to get our residence cards – I think. I actually have no idea WHY we were there, just that we all had to be there.

I don’t know how it happened, but, while we were out, I made friends. Quite a few actually. We all set times to spend time out together, going out to buy food for breakfast, eat dinner, and even go to the ¥100 store (basically a dollar store). There was Oumrati from France; Jam (I think her full name was Jamilah), from the Philippines, who I overheard introducing herself as the one with the sweet name; Heewon (I hope I remembered her name correctly, though it’s probably spelled wrong) from Korea, one of the students who will only be here for six months; Aulia from Indonesia, who I spoke to first I do believe; Caroline from Germany, who will also only be here for six months; Sacha, from the Netherlands; Kelly, also from the Netherlands; and then me, the American kid.

I’ve made friends from all over the world. I’ve met a few from America, and that’s nice and all, but I’m really glad that we’re so diverse here. I didn’t come to Japan to make friends from my own country; I came here to learn about other countries and cultures while learning about the Japanese culture, language, and all that jazz. That’s exactly what I’m doing too.

Well, all of us besides Oumrati, Sacha, and Kelly went out to the post office to pay for our rented bedding (only two of us hadn’t already done so earlier). There was a nice Japanese gentleman who helped one of us, though he ended up having to ask a worker to help us. That was an adventure and a half. Luckily, some of us can speak Japanese well enough to understand what was being said (don’t look at me).

Afterwards, we waited for the others, and set back off to You Me, a shopping mall with a grocery section, lots of other stuff we wanted but didn’t need, and plenty of restaurants. We ate somewhere different than yesterday; this time, I had Tempura Udon and Nihonshu (probably botched up that spelling terribly). It was all delicious, and the majority of us loved what we had. A few others tried the Nihonshu, and they all agreed that it was a bit strong; I was definitely not going to finish it. We were grocery shopping afterwards, and I needed to be sober to think about stuff like that.

We all came back to the dorm afterwards, planning to meet the next day at 10:15 in the lobby to head to the ¥100 store, since we didn’t have time to do it today. We also want to find a Supermarket – since it would be cheaper than the grocery section in You Me, especially close to closing time (according to Jam, who has done plenty of research on this, most perishables are half off near closing).

I hope I saved enough money for now. I can’t check my bank account without wifi, and it will still be a bit before the school sends me money anyway. There’s a lot of up-front payment I have to do: bedding, internet installation, things like that. Food is also expensive, even if you don’t eat out! We’re also taking a trip this coming weekend. Here’s to hoping I don’t run out of money!

Also, it was so hot and humid here because I didn’t know how to work the AC. I didn’t even know that random nob on the wall WAS AC control; it doesn’t have any form of instructions, not even kanji. Sooooo yeah, it feels nice here now. Yay.

I didn’t yet snag a photo of my friends, though I hope to do so tomorrow. Instead, have some selfies:

Selfie selfie selfieistillhatethisprocess