Kohi

Justin was nice enough to give me a kick ass blender and a small red coffee machine, so right now I am gradually waking up by degrees as I sniff the smell of fresh brewed coffee. I had actually convincedd myself that instant coffee was not just okay, but sort of good. Ha. What a delusion. Just the smells of fresh coffee alone beat out instant coffee. Can't wait.
And the blender's been fun too. Yesterday I made a frapacino thing that was better than the Starbuck's version. And at the store I bought bananas, yogurt, frozen strawberries, pinapple, and o.j. so now I'll be able to make rockin' smoothies.
Coffee's ready.

Hiroshima

Last weekend Ingrid, Mark, Misha and I flew west to Hiroshima. We were there for three days, which was plenty of time, so we got to see all the sites and the city at a very relaxed pace (read: we partied till 6 a.m. every night and didn't get up before noon).
We arrived Saturday morning but didn't get checked in to our hotel until early afternoon. After grabbing some food, Ingrid and I went to the Peace Memorial Museum. Overall I thought the museum was well done; it was haunting and sobering, and at points truly disturbing. However, the focus was solely on the Americans bombing Hiroshima, and not much other information about the war (for example, Nanking) was provided. After spending several hours at the museum we walked around the park and went to look at the A-bomb dome, which was one of the only buildings that was not raised. It has been left unrepaired and its skeleton like remains can be seen from far away and serve as a telling reminder of the destruction that occurred.
That night we went out for a "Tex-Mex" dinner and though the food was good, the portions were tiny. And although I knew better, we all ordered margaritas, but instead we got strait tequila. We all had to order orange juices to mix with our "margaritas" to make them plausibly palatable.
We cruised around the city that night, stopping in at a club (that we left once the military ratio became too great), a small GnR playing bar, and lastly, Big Echo karaoke. I was really happy because the Big Echo Karaoke establishment is the second place I've found in Japan that has Young MC's "Busta Move."
Sunday we crawled out of bed and soothed our stomachs with lots of fried stuff. Then we took the 70 minute tram and 10 minute ferry to Miya-jima island, which was once believed to actually itself be a god. The island was really picturesque, hence the floating red tori being one of the most photographed images in Japan (I think it comes right after Fuji). But the island had it all: hoards of tame deer with a penchant for paper fans, lush green mountains, and lots of old, stone lanterns.
We walked around the island for quite some time, waiting for sunset so that we could get primo pics of the tori.
Once we got back to Hiroshima we had some very bomb (sorry, bad pun) okonomiyaki, which Hiroshima is famous for because they put soba or udon noodles in it. We went to a restaurant recommended by locals and had to wait for about 45 minutes to get in, but the wait was well worth it.
That night we started out at an Amnesty party that was winding down by the time we arrived, but we did get to see the bartender do some crazy bottle juggling that put Tom Cruise to shame. Then we went to a costume bar, but no one was in costume, in fact there were only 2 other people in the bar, so we wound up getting those people and the bartender to play drinking games with us.
Monday we checked out 2 hours late. It was too hot and we were too hung-over to do much so we went to go see "Batman Begins", which was totally awesome. Like, I actually yelled out "Holy shit this rocks!" at one point during the movie. After we shopped around and I spent 2000-yen on parts of socks (no, not even a whole pair), but the pieces I bought are super cool.

Fukuoka

Although it rained torrentially the entire time Lianne, Dave and I were in Fukuoka, and our original plans (catch a midnight ferry Friday night to the small island of Bempo, where we would engage in a weekend of kayaking, snorkeling and hiking) had to be scrapped because of weather, we had an excellent time.
Friday night we wandered around Fukuoka, had a great dinner at a crab themed restaurant and took in the sights of the bustling metropolis.
Saturday morning while drying off over coffee at Starbucks we formulated our plan for the rest of the weekend. Get a car and drive while it was raining; if the rain subsided, get out and hike around.
Saturday morning we got our little, green Nissan March and headed out for Kurukawa, an onsen town. The drive was amazingly beautiful; I imagine that Ireland looks a lot like Kyshu, and Lianne and Dave conferred. Green rolling hills, breathtaking mountains, valleys and gorges.
After stopping at an information center we were presented with an overwhelming amount of onsen options; we finally picked one mostly because we happened upon it. It turned out to be one of the best onsen I have ever been to (far better than the famous one in Gunma, with the bear who bit my hand). There were two outside springs for women and both were situated over a roaring river. To get from one to the other you had to walk through a very dense, lush path. There were only a couple other bathers so Lianne and I felt like we had the place to ourselves. It misted gently the whole time, and for once we welcomed the cool drops while soaking in the hot water.
After our bath we headed to our hostel, and then went to eat at one of the best decorated restaurants I have ever dined at. It was a Thai restaurant and literally everything in the restaurant had been imported from Thailand. The restaurant itself was like a giant log-cabin and beautiful wood carvings adorned all the surfaces. The cabinets were full of exquisite china and religious statues. I was even afraid to sit on the elaborately tessellated toilet. And luckily (although it wouldn't have mattered too much because the restaurant was that cool) the food was just as nice.
We then went for some post-prandial bowling. Although it seemed like a regular enough bowling alley from the outside, that night turned out to be one of the strangest bowling experiences ever. For starters, the first round I broke 100. Then, we discovered the juke box, and although it only had about 30 songs, we dug deep and found long forgotten jems like, Roxette "Nothing Compares", "Blue Velvet", "Return of the Mac", and "La Bamba". And as we were jamming out to our requested tunes the place started filling up with the least likely clientele, the Yukataza, so named by us because they were all wearing yukata that had camo print and Guernica type drawings on them...and their numbers just kept growing. Never before in my life (and probably never again) had I bowled with an army of bowlers who wore only their bathrobes and purple, Velcro bowling shoes. That's hot.
Sunday morning we drove to Mt. Aso, home to Japan's biggest and only active volcano. Unfortunately, due to the cottoncandy-like pervasive fog we weren't allowed to hike the volcano. However, we still wanted to do some hiking so we decided to drive down the mountain and find a place to walk around where the fog would be less intense.
After driving around for a bit and finding nothing, we decided to stop in at this enormous complex with several enormous golden cow statues out front, very Biblical indeed. It turned out this place was not only a huge shopping complex full of farm goods, but was also a commune of some sort, which housed the infamous Pod People, who apparently lived in Styrofoam pods. We only discovered their dwellings after hiking around cow paddocks for over an hour.
We decided to leave that strange place, even though it had the enticing Forrest of Genki, and head to Kumamoto to check out the third most famous castle in Japan. The castle was okay, but even better I got to hold the sword of the ninja who was guarding the castle and do fake battle with him for a picture.
That night, after practicing with the ninja, we took Kumamoto by storm. We started out with some crappy ramen, which was a disappointment because Fukuoka is famous for ramen. But we chugged beers at the ramen shop and Lianne stuck chopsticks in her ears and twirled around in imitation of a firework.
Then we went to a pretty cool looking bar with no customers. Feeling emboldened by our earlier beers we invited the wait staff to come join us. And to our surprise, they did. And even better, they plied us with free beers and shots. We asked them to recommend a bar, which they did, and made plans to meet up with them there later.
So we found bar San-ctu-ary, and again there were no people. Now that we were feeling really emboldened, Lianne and I asked the bartender if we could take over for awhile. And again, he said yes. So for the rest of the night the bartender let us make our own drinks, and by and large gratis.
After we were pretty drunk we decided the music could be better, so we searched around for a DJ, but instead of a DJ we found the exact same juke box as the one in the Kurakawa bowling alley the night before!!! We were flabbergasted. Who knew there was such a thing as pre-fab juke boxes stocked with oddities like C&C Music Factory and Bump of Chicken?!
Later that night one of the waiters from the previous bar did meet up with us, but unfortunately he was joined not by the friend we had been drinking with earlier, but by his boss who unhesitatingly introduced himself as The King. I'm a "little" Yakuza, he told me. Well he sucked, and eventually we ditched him by taking a food break elsewhere. When we returned to San-ctu-ary The King had left, and in his honor we requested "Black Velvet."
The next day we were really hurting and barely woke up in time to get the car back to Fukuoka. We were too hung-over to brave the rain and see any real sights, so instead we wandered around the large shopping/entertainment complex Canal City, which the Lonely Planet described as "verging on the sexy." After almost losing our lunch over the hairless guinea pig I found in a pet store, we decided to fork over the 1800-yen and see Tom Cruise single handedly battle an alien nation.
And then it was back to Ibaraki.