10-08-06 Sunday "Travel"

Sunday 10-9 “Travel to Omuta”
I checked out of New Otani Tokyo today. Surprisingly enough, I paid a relatively small phone bill of about a hundred yen -$10. This seemed odd to me because Tokyo is a very ala cart society. (For example, the hotel charged extra for the gym; something that is often free in most hotels.) But I would guess that because everyone and their mothers in Japan have cellphones, there most be some competition which drives cell rates down.

One thing I saw everywhere was SOFTBANK. I thought it was a financial institution, but it is in fact a cell phone service that sponsors The Hawks, a major professional baseball time (and very famous at that) from Tokyo.

We got on a bus to Haneda Airport and got ready for a one night stay at The Omuta Garden Hotel in Omuta (www.omuta-garden.jp).

We were served a “bag lunch” which consisted of a very strange three piece assortment of sandwich halves. It was pretty good, but not at all like any sandwich I had ever had in the states. The three slices of bread, club-style, on each half were very very light, and they were not like any bread we sell here. One piece had a combo of something like egg salad with ham, while another two had turkey and cucumber.



The airport had a smoking room in the front entrance way and a number of smoking vending machines throughout.

Touching down at Kumamoto Airport, we took an hour bus trip to Omuta-shi, Fukuoka, passing a whole lot of agricultural sites including a number of fruit and rice farmers busy at work. We are now traveling with Mykki (Translator) and Naoko Oguruma (Group Coordinator – our teacher) and a gov’t official from The Board of Education named Hiroshima Hiroyuki.

Finally we checked in, after a very busy day of traveling, to a tiny hotel room, about 8 x 10 feet with a bathroom that looks like something you would find in a trailer park to the Omuta Garden Hotel in Fukuoka, Japan. It was a very clean and had FREE INTERNET!!!

I posited up with Kip, Andrew and Jenny and decided to go out and rustle up some grub. We walked around near a Toys R Us, we found a “Ringer Hut” which looked very much like a rip-off of Pizza Hut, but selling octopus instead of pizza.

Speaking of ridiculous, that brings me to the KANCHU tangent. I have read and I have learned that in Japan, the kids have a crazy wedgie thing that they do. They take their hands, using their index fingers outstretched in the shape of a gun and they wait for people to bend over then ZoOooOooOoowie! You can probably guess what they do. I have not experienced it yet first HAND, but I figure I may need to wear butt-armor when I go to Arao Third Middle School later this week.

We came across a lot of decorative graffiti that I days later found out is from one of the schools that I have yet to visit at this point.



We continued to look for a good Japanese restaurant and almost settled for a western bar, until I spoke up and said “there is no point to come to Japan to eat pizza.” They agreed.

Finally, we found two women from our group and they were drunk off their butts. Bad formula… Drunken older women & too much saki = crazy! They did tell us to go out to eat at an awesome restaurant and showed us the way.

The walls were paper and we were now officially in the slipper society that we had heard about, having to remove our shoes at the door. The sunken tables provided leg space without kneeling, which was cool because kneeling a whole meal would make my knees break and fall off.

It is funny because here they served ice cold towels before the food to clean up with. Anyhow, I ordered Meat on sticks, called yakatore. This is my new favorite Japanese dish (partly because it is cooked and partly because it is meat.)

Good time had by all.