Vacation Part I

Man, it's been busy! The day after I came back from vacation I had to go back to work, and my desk was a mess! I was working till almost 7:00 pm from Wednesday to Friday just to get my desk cleared off!

Anyways, thought I'd put down my thoughts on my vacation in a little more detail. My aunty is a travel agent who's office specializes in Japan tours. My sister and I have never gone on any of the tours since we've always mainly wanted to go to Japan to buy manga, DVD's, CD's, etc. and the tours usually end up going to a thousand shrines and temples which we never feel like seeing. Knowing this, my aunty just gets us the plane tickets and makes the hotel reseverations for us. She leaves the rest up to us. In other words, we have to figure out how to get to the hotel! In Tokyo & Osaka it's not so bad since my aunty usually puts us up in a hotel which is on the limousine bus route so that we can catch the bus to go to the hotel from the airport and vice versa.

So, on our first day we leave Hawaii International Airport on Tuesday morning June 24, 2005. Like I said in my previous entry, the flight to Fukuoka was 9 hours loooooooong! I couldn't wait to get off the plane and breathe some fresh air! When we arrived in Japan it was already Wednesday afternoon June 25, 2005 (in other words, we lost a whole day).

After getting our luggage we had to figure out how to get to our hotel. I had done a little research and found out that the Hakata Miyako Hotel (the hotel we stayed at in Fukuoka) was located directly across the street from the Fukuoka Station. Knowing this, I knew that we had to ride the subway to the station from the airport. The problem was finding where the subway was. After finding information we found out that we had to take a tram from the airport to the subway station. We found the tram stop, hopped on and went to the subway station. Luckily there were a whole lot of other people who were also going to the subway so we just followed all those people to the station. After getting to the station we purchased our subway tickets and got on the subway. Luckily, the subway wasn't too crowded and we were able to get to the Fukuoka station without too much trouble. The next problem was finding the hotel. We were looking around and around, but couldn't find the hotel! Wouldn't you know it, we went out the wrong exit! After going back in to the station, we found an information booth, and asked for directions. The girl in the booth pointed us in the opposite direction of the exit that we had gone out of! XP Of course when we went out that exit we immediately saw the darn hotel! By the time we got settled into our rooms it was already 3:00 pm so we decided to just walk around the station since there was a shopping arcade attached to the station, bought some dinner at the food market at the department store then went back to the hotel. End of our first day in Japan!

The next day we left our room at 9:45. We went to Tenjin to visit Tenjin Chikagai which is an underground shopping arcade and also to find the Animate store there. In the afternoon we went to see Canal City which is a somewhat new and HUGE shopping complex. We spent the rest of the day walking around the complex (that's how big it was!). We started back to the hotel at around 4:30, stopped at the department store again to pick up dinner and called it a day. End of day 2.

Tadaima!

I'm finally home! Vacation was great, but it's nice to be back home again!

We didn't get to see everything we wanted to in Kyushuu, but I don't know if want to go there again since the plane ride was 9 HOURS LONG! That plane ride was just a liiiiiitle too long (just a little, my poor butt! ^^;). Anyways, I finally got to see the Peace Park in Nagasaki & the Atomic Bomb Museum in Hiroshima. It was touching and depressing at the same time. Seeing the ruins of the buildings, the pictures, the artifacts, it really made me realize how awful the atomic bomb was. I can't even begin to imagine the pain and the suffering all those people went through. It made me think that sometimes progress isn't necessary especially when it comes to war.

I did enjoy looking for all the comic book stores. There's this chain of comic book stores called Animate that has stores all over Japan. My sister and I always try to find as many as we can wherever we are since it gives us a good excuse to get lost! We end up going to places where tourists usually don't go and get to see interesting things and find other interesting stores along the way.

I normally buy a lot of comics (which I did again this time!) since I have to buy my G-Defend comics in Japan. I don't know why, but the publishing company won't sell their comics overseas and they don't sell their comics on Amazon.co.jp so I have to go to Japan to buy them. I also buy quite a bit of dojinshi comics. This time I bought a few Kamen Rider and Sentai dojinshi comics as well as a bunch of V^ ones. Pretty hilarious! I found about five new comic titles that I'm enjoying which are "Reijyuki", "Holyland" (this is the manga that Ishigaki Yuma's new drama is based on), Kami To Sengoku Seitokai", "Yamigami Kou", and "Onmyou Taiseiki". Boy, did I buy A LOT of manga (yabai ^^;)! I normally buy a few CD's & DVD's and end up buying tons of video games, but this year was the opposite. I spent some big bucks on a bunch of DVD's and CD's and bought only 1 video game. I'm starting to get into Orange Range's music so I bought quite a few of their CD's as well as a couple of W-inds cd's, Dragon Ash's new single & a couple of Tokusatsu theme songs that I'd been looking for.

As far as DVD's go I found the Kat-Tun & Johnny's World DVD's the Bonita had recommended as well as my Kamen Rider DVD's and a couple of "Odoru Daisossen" DVD's. I was looking for "Quiz" disc 6, but NOBODY had it! I'm sooooooo frustrated!

I also made a pig of myself! Hiroshima okonomiyaki is OISHIIIIIIII!!!!!! We ate it both nights we were there! Deeeeelicious! I would go back again just to eat okonomiyaki again, but I have to go back again anyway since I didn't get to go to Miyajima Island yet! XD We also ate a lot of musubi, ramen & crepes (banana chocolate with whipped cream, yum!). I also ate this nasubi donburi from a food market in Fukuoka. That was really good! It's a good thing we walked around a lot or else they would've had to roll me off the plane!

Phew, guess I'll end it here, still got some unpacking and cleaning up to do! Ja, mata yoroshiku ne!!! ^_^