My iphoto crashed.  So until I recover my pictures (because I'd better freaking be able to recover them), I don't have any for you.  And the internet doesn't work here.  So unless I have internet in Fukuoka then it's sayounara until I get back to Utah.  Sigh.  If I know you then I'll give you a present.

I'm not ready to come back yet! 

Gifu

This is our room at the AMAZING ryokan (the Taga). 
This is the view from our window.
Nagara river.
Another cheesy touristy head-thing.
Laugh!
After the Ukai (cormorant fishing) Rebecca and I were cold.  So we shared Dad's jacket.  Seconds after this picture was taken a couple took one of us too.  Then walked away.  Laughing.

Tokyo

We went straight from the shinkansen to the temple. They translated for us, but I was really tired so they needn't have bothered.
 The Hachiko statue.  I would tell you the story but Dad is loudly requiring my computer.
Ultra-man.  Nothing more should be said.
Cute gaijin.
Cute gaijin gracing the Asakusa shrine.
Sorry the picture is fuzzy.  I know it's different in America, but here it's rude to take pictures of people sleeping on the train.  Even if they are as awesome as this couple.
Tokyo Disneyland entrance, we were so excited.

Our princess castle.

Gangsta car.  I ruined it by smiling.  I just didn't want the kids to cry.
Dad took this picture from the car in front of us on Thunder Mountain.  This basically sums up Tokyo.

Shinkansen Trip

Last Saturday we took the Shinkansen from Fukuoka to Tokyo. 

Shinkansen guts.
Fuji-san.

Kumamoto Part II

Our second day we climbed a mountain.  No really, we did.  On the way home we stopped at Kumamoto castle and attacked the resident ninja.

Here's some pictures.  The first one is from day #1, the rest are day 2 (it was sunny that day).

Kumamoto

We went on vacation!  Yesterday morning we left with our school for Kumamoto.  We drove for a long time.  Driving.  Driving.  Driving.

When we got there it was raining hard.  Raining.  Raining.

Then we made soba noodles!  It was hard to cut them small enough.  So our noodles were fat. 

Later that evening we went to an onsen.  It was my first onsen experience, and this particular onsen is co-ed (it's daijoobu, the water is murky and we had towels).  But still, it was a very new experience.  The name of the onsen is Jigoku, which means Hell.  In the olden days only samurai were allowed to use it.  We used the cooler pool, but before we left I put my legs in the larger pool.  It was ridiculously hot!  I felt like a lobster.

After Jigoku we went to another spring at the same site.  It was women only, so relaxing was easier.  There were beautiful maple trees all around the pool.  By the time we left we smelled strongly of rotten eggs.

We then ate dinner (a barbeque: we had hot dogs, meat, carrots, eggplant, pumpkin, onion, lettuce, more meat, yakisoba, real sprite, squash, ect.  You can grill anything in Japan.  But grilled lettuce is pretty good) and watched some good Japanese TV.  Whoa, people are really weird.

Our Saturday

Since I'm staying up this late anyway I may as well post our Saturday pictures.  I skipped from Friday to Sunday without saying anything about it.

We went to Hakata Bay and then to a temple.  We went with our friend from school, and we had a lot of fun.

This is our before-we-start picture.  My dweeby open mouthed smile.
The view from the Hakata Bay Museum tower.  Fukuoka is a pretty city.
Us, in front of the ocean.  Ocean!  You can't see them in the picture, but there are jellyfish.
Sometimes graffiti makes me giggle inside. 
The temple gate.
The temple entrance, you can't take pictures after you climb the stairs.  But it was really cool inside too.  It was very quiet, and leaves were falling.
An ancient holy tree.  It's over 800 years old.

Highlights of today: Yoshinogari Historical Park

Everyone in our ward is so kind.  On Friday the professional kimono lady dressed us up and today a family in the ward invited us to come with them to see some ancient ruins.  We went with them, the sister missionaries, and three other Americans.  It was really funny.  Over the entire day we covered a lot of ground.  We drove from the church at Fujisaki to wherever the Historical Park is, and from there to Marinoa World (home to a large Ferris Wheel).

Our group in our war tunics.  (we didn't wear them the whole time)
Our fierce inner warrior cannot be contained.  I wonder what everyone around us thought . . . 

We just had too.  I didn't have enough self control to not do such a cheesy tourist thing.

Lunch was awesome!  Noodles come shooting down the bamboo slide and you grab them with your chopsticks and dip them in your cup of sauce.  You get better with practice.  Kinda.

My mouth was so full I couldn't breathe.A view from the watchtower of the reconstructed village.
The entire area looked like this.  There were rice paddies and fields.  The mountains were covered in mist, there were green forests, we passed bamboo thickets, all the houses had tiled roofs, it smelled perfect.  I took this picture from the car on the way there.  It rained all day though, but wow.  It was gorgeous.

Hakata Dontaku Matsuri

We went to a festival on Sunday!  It was really fun, we ate a ton of sugar.  We had okonomiyaki, choco bananas, shaved ice (ichigo flavored with condensed milk on top), azuki bean filled mochi, roasted corn, cotton candy, soda, and sugar coated strawberries (it was like a sucker with a strawberry inside).  I basically felt super sick.

Our lovely pink tongues.
The choco-bananas.  Mine is the one with the face.  While we were eating these a weird Korean guy came over.  He talked to us for a long time.

Selected Dialogue:

KG: Do you like coffee?

Us:  Um, we don't drink coffee.

KG:  Do you believe in God?

Us:  Yes.

KG: Are you Christian?

Us:  Yes.

KG: . . . me too.

He wasn't going away . . . so:

Shelly:  Well, it was nice meeting you! *as we walk away*
The goldfish catching game!  I felt bad for them.  You should have seen all of them.  There was a baby turtle booth too.  There will be many dead turtles in Fukuoka within the week.

Friday: Kimono

Canal City Pictures

This is the performer. He's pretty impressive.
Canal City's performance area.  All the levels curve and look out over a stage.  There were banners and animal statues all over (just because).

Good thing the camera knows what we've done.

My internet hasn't been working for the last two days.  The days before it stopped working I just didn't blog.

We leave on a school trip to Mt. Aso tomorrow, I'm pretty excited.  It's going to be really pretty, and we'll be going to an onsen.  I don't think I'll have internet, so I'll update when I get back on Wednesday night (yeah . . . ).

So, what have I done between last Wednesday and this Friday?  I don't remember.  Well, not which day everything happened on.  But looking back though my pictures:  We went shopping, we saw lots of toy vending machines, I drank a NATCHAN (orange juice stuff), we ate some more custard filled Taiyaki (that picture is of our 2nd time), I took more pictures of outside my window, we got lost on our way to Canal City and walked through Gion, followed the underpass, crossed a decorative bridge, found a vending machine, bought a drink each (I got Gokuri Peach), wandered through the ghetto (as ghetto as Fukuoka/Tenjin-ish area gets), saw a ghetto cat, and found our way back to the mall where we started going the wrong way, the next pictures are of Canal City (aren't you glad we got there), at CC we watched the Charlie Chaplain impersonator, bought melon soda ice cream floats (awesome good), and did some more shopping.  Huzzah!

The next pictures after those are of the fox statues in the park.  We were really tired that day and took a nap- so later that night I made Rebecca come on a picnic.  It was really cold, wet and windy so it was a really short, pitiable kind of picnic (but I should say that it was sugoku tanoshii, just to make you jealous).