Traveling in Japan!!

7/24/2010 -DAY OF JAPAN VACATION NO 1!!

There is no better way to start off a vacation than receiving and inordinately large amount of free stuff. The three of us work up early early in the morning (5) after a late late night trying to pack up as much of our stuff as we could. Saito Shimai had made us all a breakfast/lunch bento. An onigiri, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and an egg salad sandwich. How sweet! Then she made us take 2,000 yen to help pay for our taxi. Amazing? Yes, yes it was!

We got to ride lots of SHINKANSEN YAY! :D I looooove shinkansen!! I slept, talked with joy and becca, finished Howl's Moving Castle for about the 20th time, and slept some more. Good times! One of the shinkansen we took was running late. It caused us to miss one of other connecting trains and arrive in saga about thirty minutes later. But it was an easy fix.

We went to a historical park called Yoshinogari Koen. It's an archeological site where aaaancient Japanese people, the Yayoi, used to live. It was quite incredible! The park had lots of really nice resources, water fountains to dip your towels in (get them wet and put them on your neck! Heaven!), vending machines, buildings with lots of artifacts, reconstructed buildings, water sprayers, fans... yeah it was great. We also got a FREE TOUR GUIDE! He even DROVE us over to the park. We told us awesome cool stuff about theYayoi, the park, etc. It was mostly in Japanese, and it was nice to have Joy us to explain it. There were a lot of things I didn't understand.

Back to free stuff: This guy gave us a free tour, but he also bought me a drink, and then afterwards he gave us each a necklace thing with a yayoi-styled charm on it, a hand fan, lot of papers... lol. It was crazy!

Our ride picked us up at the station. (We're staying at a BUDDHIST TEMPLE. Yeah, bet you didn't know you could do that huh??!) Well, we went over to the local onsen. Our driver bought our tickets into the onsen, AND gave us the little towels you used to wash yourself. As a gift! It was crazy. So we onsen'd it up, felt WONDERFUL after a looooong day haha. Afterwards, he bought us all a drink (Pocari Sweat!!). Yes, yet more free things!

We arrive at the temple, it's in the inaka (countryside) and it's SO dark and SO quiet and LOVELY!! He shows us to our room and it's HUGE and beautiful and tatami and really new. We have lovely futons and a cooler and a table and lots of awesome Japanese-themed décor. We're setting down our stuff and they invite us to eat suika (watermelon). So we go out to the main temple area, and they have a DRAGON painted on the ceiling and awesome Buddhist paraphernalia. We eat Japanese watermelon with the priest, his brother, his brother's wife, and the other guest at the temple. After the suika, the lovely wife brings us some Youkan, which is a type of dessert. It was so cool! Then, the priest brings out some hundreds of years old scrolls that their temple has. One has the signature of YORITOMO. Crazy. He said lots of really interesting things but they were all in Japanese and I was tired and didnt understand most of it haha.

But we ended up talking to the other guest about staying at temples and stuff, and he said he decided to stay at a temple because of an NHK program he watched about it. The reason why WE decided we wanted to stay at a temple was because WE saw a TV show on staying at temples! We didn't remember if it was on NHK or not, but it is entirely likely that we all watched the same TV show and thend ended up staying at the same temple. What a SMALL WORLD! Haha

After that awesomeness, we were also told that they'd give us breakfast. We hadn't ordered breakfast or dinner on top of our room fees, because we decided it would be easier to just take care of ourselves. But they insisted that it wasn't a problem. So we had a lovely breakfast of a few fresh fruits and vegetables, and three slices of breads that all had different flavors to them. It was lovely and delicious!
And right before we left, the lovely wife aslo gave us a package of youkan to take home with us! They were so nice! Haha.


Day two – FUKUOKA
The serendipity continues!! There's a ward in fukuoka, so the three of us set out to find the church building and attend sacrament meeting. We got a little lost, but ended up finding it even a little bit early. Turns out the ward there has about A GAZILLION missionaries, and the mission president and his wife was also there.

After sacrament, we had planned to walk over to the temple and take pictures. The mission home is right below the temple, so the president and his wife DROVE us over there, invited us into their home, talked with us for a while, and gave us water. It was lovely! They were a very nice couple, and, like most foreigners we meet in Japan, happy to be able to talk in English, I think. Haha. But they were so sweet and the mission home was WAY nice and comfortable. It really was very nice.

After we took a bunch of pictures of the temple, we walked around some streets and located a look-out tower. From the top, we could see all of Fukuoka! It was SO beautiful!! It's a really big city. Like Tokyo/Yokohama area, but there are mountains all around, so it is SOOOO much prettier! The air was also a lot cleaner. It was lovely! And t hen we wandered around trying to find a bus/subway to take us back to our train station. We made it, and now we're sitting on a nice train. I'm looking out the window at the AMAZING Japanese countryside going by. This place is really such a beautiful country. Tonight will find us at the Happy Neko in Beppu, a town of onsen. I'm so excited for the next few days. Then I'll be home. It will be really good to see my family again, even though I will miss Japan. I always do! I guess that's the problem of loving two places so far apart.

And now we're IN Beppu! the place we're staying at is a little apartment. It's cute and pretty new and clean inside! but no cooler! It's pretty warm!! haha. Now we're exhausted and going to bed. NIGHT!!