expiration date 

we have to check out of the hotel before 10 o’clock in the morning, because the receptionist lady told us over and over again that there is a pretty hefty charge for a late check-out. we managed to squeeze breakfast before 9, where Melvyn accompanied us. soon after breakfast, we brought down our backpacks, checked out and left our backpacks in the hotel… we’re going to walk around Osaka for a little bit more before leaving for Fukuoka.

originally, we planned to take the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Fukuoka. but then we found out that the trip from Osaka to Fukuoka takes over four houes… wow… we would like to see some view, but four hours is a pretty long ride… so, we decided to take the plane to Fukuoka. as Naomi told us, the price of the plane ticket is only around 1000 yen more expensive, and the flight is (i think) about an hour. not bad…

our flight is at 3:45 in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to waste. we walked across to the Amerika-Mura (literally translated to American Village). supposedly, this area was formed by a few Japanese who went to America and bought American clothes and accessories to sell them back in Japan. this area was where most of the shops were. now, it’s full of “American style” shops… unfortunately, we got there rather early and all of the shops are still closed. it looked more like a ghost town… it’s still pretty neat because most of the rolling doors of the shops are painted with graffiti.

in the ferris wheel mall

it only 10:30AM, and everything was still closed. so ari and i decided to take the train to Umeda station and see what’s there. we passed the rush hour, so the train wasn’t too crowded.

we were trying to find the Umeda Building, a large tower with floating garden in the middle (that was the description in our guide book). i don’t really know how large it was and we weren’t sure where it was located either. we left the guide book in the backpack, which we left at the hotel…

so, we walked around the Kita area, only to find a mall with a(nother) ferris wheel on top of it. no Umeda Building, though. i was going to ride the ferris wheel again, hoping that maybe we could spot the building, but ari had enough of ferris wheels… he’s not very comfortable with heights anyway.

we went into the mall and found a large red sperm whale (fake one, of course) hanging from the ceiling of the mall… whoa… strange, but neat. there is a smaller one, which we guess is the cub behind it. wow… Japanese malls have the weirdest things for decoration…

since we couldn’t find the Umeda building, we headed back to Shinsaibashi (where our hotel was) and continued exploring the Amerika-mura. most of the stores are now open, yay. the highlight of the stroll was that we found the Chax Colony store, which makes Gloomy Bears. this was the first time that ari and i actually bought something. i got a Gloomy Bear paw for cellphone accessory, and ari bought a kubrik-ish Gloomy Bear toy. i also took picture with the huge Gloomy Bear… hehe.

before heading for the train station that took us to Kansai Airport, we had lunch at a cafe called Rodeo Cafe. it’s an interesting cafe… i’m not sure if it was intentional, but the decoration was a mixed between Mexican theme and Southeast Asian theme. the menu was just somekind of fusion food. ari ordered some fried chicken meal, while i had a Curry with Rice. ari’s soup tasted sort of like Soto, but not quite. my curry, even though it looks like the familiar Indonesian curry (it even has the fried shallot on it), it taste exactly like the Japanese Kareraisu.

the rice curry

after the fulfilling lunch, we walked back to the hotel to pick up our baggage and started walking to the OCAT, where we can catch the bus that will take us to the Kansai Airport. ari and i spent most of the time in the bus sleeping.

the flight to Fukuoka was short, but full of little children. maybe it’s the holiday season, so there were at least one child under 5 year old on every row. these little kids have their own drama… there is this little girl in a pink coat that cries all the time, another boy in a blue coat who chases little girls all the time, another girl with a red coat doesn’t like the boy with the blue coat and preferred to walk by herself (don’t hold my hand, mom!). they’re very entertaining to watch…

our flight was delayed for half an hour, so when we arrived at the Fukuoka airport, we were worried that Jessi (ari’s sister) had been waiting and couldn’t find us. we looked around for a while before we decided that she had gone home. we took the subway and got ourselves checked into the hotel before calling Jessi. it turns out that she forgot to pick us up! hahaha… she got our arrival date messed up and thought that we arriving in Fukuoka tomorrow… aww…

after we had dinner at the restaurant right below the hotel, Jessi came over and stayed for a few hours. it’s been a while since we last saw her.

Jessi goes to school in Beppu, which is the next town we were going to visit. she was on a holiday and planned to spend her New Year in Fukuoka with her friend, Hitomi-san. ari and i thought it would be fun to meet up with her in Fukuoka, spent the New Year together with them and later tag along with Jessi to see her school in Beppu.

after chatting for a while, Hitomi-san picked Jessi up and we got to meet Hitomi-san for the first time. she was a very nice woman and surprisingly looked quite like Nia (ari’s other sister). she told us that she and Jessi will pick us up tomorrow morning and we will go sightseeing. yay!!

photo album: Japan Trip: Day 7 (30 December 2005).