*Note: Yes I know I shouldn't be traveling during Covid. I have my Covid booster shot, wore KN95 or double masks, and didn't eat out. Cases are low but not zero so it's still important to be careful. At the time in Japan the focus was on safe travel and avoiding risky things when you get to your destination, which is different than the recent alerts*
Yes I did go from the furthest north prefecture to one of the furthest south prefectures. I had a JR East pass and people to visit so that is how I did things. I was smart this time and booked my shinkansen seats early. Was next to two women and an adorable 1 year old. Sometimes the kiddo dropped his toys but since they were busy holding him I would often pick up the toys if they fell near me. Kids are a group effort so I was happy to help.
Now, I wasn't taking the train the whole way but actually taking it to Tokyo then flying to Fukuoka. The day before, I noticed an old study abroad friend of mine posted on social media from Tokyo Tower, so upon finding out he was still in Tokyo we managed to meet up for about 10 minutes outside Tokyo Station. Then another study abroad friend drunk called our group chat to wish us a happy new year while I was on the train to the airport. It was quite an afternoon.
I'd never flown domestically in Japan before, and I have to say the weirdest part of it all was that nobody ever checked my ID. Like...isn't that important?!? Apparently this is normal. The other hilarious thing is the airline has a 7kg luggage limit and my bags were about 1.5kg over so the lady told me to shove some stuff in my pockets. This was before security so I put everything back in my bags before security and nobody checked again. Not sure what the logic of this is, but still find it funny that the staff there just told me to put more stuff in my pockets.
Friend picked me up at the airport, at which point I was very much overheating in my snow jacket, and we went to his parents' house. Most of my time at the house was spent watching TV with his parents or cooking with his mom. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the dishes we made but I did learn a lot about Japanese cooking on this trip overall. My cousin's wife taught me how to make tempura and from my friend's mom I learned tonkatsu, pickled onions, pan steamed fish, real dashi, how to cut vegetables properly, and a traditional soup to Fukuoka. I also blew the minds of friend's mom and sister by showing them that you can peel ginger really fast using a spoon, something I learned in my time on trail crew.
As for other adventures, one of my college friends who got into JET was passing through Fukuoka on their way home so we met up at Ohori Park. When texting to find him, I was trying to think of a landmark to meet at but decided to just try my luck finding him in the crowd. Of course, this was fairly easy. My friend is a 6'2" lacrosse player with red hair, so in his own words "I am the meeting place." This park presented me the opportunity to use my favorite stupid Japanese joke: pointing at a map and saying "おいしくないチーズ" (oishikunai chiizu, which means "not delicious cheese") as the word for map in Japanese is 地図(chizu) which to my American ear sounds similar to the word for cheese, hence pointing at maps and calling them "not delicious cheese" because map sounds like cheese and I don't think maps would taste good. American friend thought it was hilarious, Japanese friend likes to point out that チーズ(chiizu) and 地図(chizu) are different words. Anyway, I think it's hilarious.
We also went to a mountain viewpoint where you could see all of Fukuoka. There was even a rural village up in the mountains, despite being quite close to the bustling city of Fukuoka.
My lovely friend also took me to a shrine so I could get a shrine signature and got our fortunes. Basically you pay 100yen and grab a slip of paper with a fortune on it, then when done reading you tie it to a special place in the shrine. We both got average fortunes, but both warned of traveling. This was definitely some foreshadowing for our trip to my place XD. Also, this particular shrine had what an ALT friend of mine calls a "play and pray," which is a shrine with an attached playground. There are several in my area, but we weren't sure if they existed elsewhere.
And onto the trip back to my place. Our flight was at 7:15am so we had to get up stupid early to get to the airport...only to find that our flight was canceled. After a lot of talking between my friend and an airport representative, we decided to take a flight to Tokyo then trains the rest of the way home. However, the flight wasn't until noon. We ended up chilling in a bookstore cafe until the flight, which apparently they messed up our tickets for so we had to go back to the counter right before our flight. These new tickets actually had my name misspelled, but as I said earlier they don't check ID's so this wasn't really an issue. This resulted in us getting to cut the security line somewhat, which is both embarrassing and convenient. After that was a lot of trains, my snow jacket becoming necessary after the blissful few days of wearing a t-shirt, and my poor friend getting a harsh introduction to snow country. You see I live about a 20 minute walk from the station and that walk was in freezing temperatures with snow and ice on the ground. My house was also about 3C(38F) when we got there. At least I could escape the snow in Fukuoka for a couple days.
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