Fu*k(uoka) you!

Hello all! Hope you're all well, and that your life is filled with lots of dessert, weather that's the perfect balance of cool and warn, free samples, tea drinking, green traffic lights at perfect times and hilarious innuendo. Because, that's my conception of a good life!

So around a month ago (given my terrible conception of time- where "a couple of days ago" means a year ago- it was probably more than that!), I went to Fukuoka with some friends. It was an incredibly fun day of driving, singing, talking, eating and shopping...on steroids.

Fukuoka is basically the biggest city in Kyushu, the part of Japan I'm living in. It's like our answer to Tokyo. It takes around 2 hours by car, but due to Tomek's super pro driving, we got there a lot quicker! I got a real awakening of the crazy K-Pop kind. Tomek, Katie and Cheryl were belting out K-pop tunes, it was absolutely hilarious and incredibly entertaining. Honestly, the fun we had in the car was my favourite part of the day!

First of all, we went to Dazaifu, an absolutely beautiful temple. We got our fortunes for the year ahead. Luckily we were all in the clear... although worryingly, mine was meant to be good, but said things like "If you want to do X you shouldn't." and "You will die". Well, it didn't really say the second one, but it may as well have because I felt a tremendous amount of trepidation for the coming year! Luckily, they have it all figured out in Japan, in that if you tie the piece of paper onto a special place, your bad luck will go away. So I did that. I'm pleased to report that since then, I have tried to do as little as humanly possible. You may call it lazy- I call it risk minimisation!

After, we visited the Pokemon centre.  Because, I'm mad keen on Pokemon, yo! Ahhh, well, not really. Never have I felt so excluded from fandom when I was in amongst a huge mass of Pokemon fans, and of course my Pokemon-crazed friends.

By this time, my stomach was just about eating itself because I hadn't eaten in around 8 hours. We finally got our stomachs lined with yummy ramen. The shop was so popular we had to line up! It was worth the wait, I really enjoyed it. Hakata ramen (a tonkotsu broth) is very famous for being lip-smakingly delicious. But I must admit and be a bit patriotic in saying I actually prefer the ramen in Oita! "Oita, Oita, Oita- Oi, Oi, Oi!" (joke for you Ozzies!)

Next stop- the shopping trip! I was ultra excited, because it is a bit lacking here for clothes shops here in Oita. So, ah, I kind of spent the whole of the 2 hours we had to shop in Forever 21 (Like Zara, but more fun and a hell of a lot cheaper). It's just such a frikken amazing store- don't judge!

Then we went to Costco- my first time! Woah, what a crazy place! For some odd reason, there was a huge line outside to enter, which apparently isn't usually the case. I got all the things you can't readily find here/is expensive- porridge, nuts, dried fruit and the like. It was so fun to try and find some bargains, but my god it was like trying to navigate through a maze! We had an incredibly healthy dinner of hotdogs and cinnamon scrolls, providing us fuel to sing like maniacs on the way home.

Last stop was Ikea. Who doesn't like Ikea? (Whilst this was a rhetorical question, if you do happen to know someone- I recommend you stop hanging out with them effective immediately). We, being the extremely mature 20-something year olds we are, made use of the displays. Enjoy the results!

All in all, it was an awesome day. Can't wait til next time!