Ah, the countryside...

So the last two days have been filled with lots of traveling and lots of traditional Japanese things. On Sunday, we woke up early and hopped on the Shinkansen to head to Fukuoka / Hakata. The train trip took about 6 hours, but it wasn't bad at all! Instead, it was quite relaxing and provided a nice overview of central and southern Honshu. While the train isn't as quick as a plane, there is no stress and much more space. I was really impressed with how nice it was! Once we got to Hakata, we met up with my friend from high school. We wandered around, and got a bite to eat at the best ramen restaurant. The ramen was amazing, with not too much richness to the soup and good noodle texture. The flavor was very full and I added some garlic and roast pork slices to be a little extravagant. Natalie describes it as "jizz in your mouth." The restaurant was the type where you select and pay for what you want outside at a machine, and then you take the tickets that the machine gives you inside to the kitchen counter. You sit in a little box so no one can see if you are a messy eater ... or if you are alone. It was a really fun experience! Afterwards, we headed to the trendy shopping part of Fukuoka and checked out the local shopping scene. We played around with taking Purikura and having fun, and then headed back to the station to take the train to Okayama.
Okayama is a smaller town, about 45 minutes from Osaka on the train. It's very near to some hot spring resorts, so that's where we headed yesterday. We drove for about an hour, and then we got to the hotel. We went into the outdoor hot springs for about an hour to soak and relax, and then were treated to a delicious traditional Japanese meal. After lunch, we continued our drive and went to an extremely old Japanese temple. The people there were so nice and showed us around the entire thing ^^ We headed home afterwards, and then went to the office so that I could help Keigo with some of the work he needed to get done. For dinner, we went to an extremely cheap revolving sushi restaurant. Dinner for 5 people was $30 USD! It was a good deal ^^




Ashi fell down the stairs at 3:27 PM