agroove

高千穂 takachiho in 宮崎県 miyazaki ken

man this town had like… no ppl, theres no taxi driving around till way later, no one walking on the street, super inaka, almost reminds me of surrey, except we got traffic where at takachiho i could cartwheel across the street and be fine, its like, there were 2 school girls saw me and my coworker, and they ran away, and then peeped around the corner, and then ran further （†。†） but ya still, they got some awesome places to see, like the gorge – its made from the lava that came all the way from mt aso in kumamoto, and you can take a boat ride, check out the 紅葉 autumn leaves, and go see a crazy shrine 天安河原 (amanoyasukawara) under a cave, and… thats it, so you should never stay over night there

theres snow in vancouver, lots （´・ω・）ノ

japanese emoticons are sweet

学園祭 (gakuensai) is school festival, why doesnt our universities do this? the gakuensai was so cool, too bad it rained all day

the seinan university gakuensai was yesterday, it was all weekend actually but i only wanted to go yesterday, b/c everyday theres different events, but yesterday there was naka no mori band concert! and then the 28th miss campus girl contest! theres also whole bunch of cheap crazy food where ppl run up to you and are just like, are you hungry? no right? dont you want to eat some of (food name)!? its really delicious i promise! and they just kinda keep walking along with you but slowly force you to the side where you just end up at their stand… its like what we did at sfu, when cac hosts like carnival or food court, except we would have to combine all the events together to have the same amount of crowd, because pretty much the ENTIRE school participates, and they have celebrities too, man why cant we get celebrities or singers… anyway, i kinda got screwd b/c i ate like 1 food (tacos, and then freakin got tomato sauce on my white shirt, gg), then went to watch concert right away, which was uber, and the girl that plays the bass guitar (yuko? or yucco) was uber kewl, maybe cause she also had short hair too that made her really かわいい, and then right after contest was starting, then when thats over, all the food stand closed >.< so then i just went to eat yoshinoya, boo-urns

i also went to kyuudai (kyushuu daigaku) gakuensai after work on friday with my coworker too, they had it until way late, and ya, bunch ppl ran around with food tray and asked if i was hungry, and we ended up at this one stand where these guys from a club i dont know kept asking us to come eat, and then they said we made enough money for the day already so if you come, all the food is free, so its like… id be stupid not to go, but i didnt want to just leech off them, so i bought a beer, and we sat there for like an hr+, at the end, apparently its tradition for them to chug down all the alcohol, we should make that our tradition too

Beppu/Oita: Onsen city

i wish i can go onsen right now, im in my office working, it is 14 Deg, it doesnt sound cold, maybe no heater is giving me false perception

so ya, went to so-called las vegas of japan according to wiki, and wiki is always right, except i stayed at the kannawa onsen, not beppu onsen, and really, theres like 6 more famous onsen area, all 8 makes the super onsen transformer travel spot. Really i didnt know whats there to do, and i booked it pretty last minute, and its (apparently) onsen season now all like 48545*+z% hotel rooms are full, so i just took whateva is avail within budget. By the Kannawa onsen theres the Jigoku (地獄) meguri, where you see these 8 funky onsen for 400yen each, which is totally a rip off, so you buy the package tickets for 2000, and remember to use tourist coupon to save 10% ;p to make you feel like you got your moneys worth at each spot, they have some extra stuff to look at other than the 80 – 100 deg pond, one of them had 122 crocodiles (apparently the burningness environment is makes it a good habitat), another had a zoo where theres monkeys/elephant/flamingoes/llama/hippo/condor (i never actually seen one of those, they are freakin massive, like half of my height atleast), one of them is red – the bloody pond hell, another is super blue – the ocean hell, one of them makes so much mist i almost ran into a cute girl – the mountain hell (actually that didnt happen, but it could!), and like one thats super muddy bubbly, another shoots out spring every 25 min or so etc… anyway, it rained all day so it was not so cool to walk around, near the end just went to an onsen around the area with open air onsen, its awesome, its where you bath outside and check out sceneries and possibly more, and then went back to the ryokan, and they gave us pretty good food, i love jap ryokan food, then i went to the open air onsen at night, that was sweet too, they need to make some onsen back home, yes everyone is n3kk1d in there (or have small towel, girls get to use big towels to wrap around them), as long as you dont look, they wont look, beside, sometimes theres mixed bath pond too

then next day morning, left to go oita, on the way stopped at takazaki mountain zoo, or the monkey mountain, theres literally hundreds (theres 1200+ i think) monkeys running around around you, scratching each other monkeys back, and fight to get food when its feeding time, oita city is pretty boring, took a walk for about 2 hrs, ate lunch, and then ended up going to sing k for 3 hrs to kill time, at during lunch theres was a special on beppu and showed all these other cool stuff to do, like getting buried in the sand, gg

btw i read on digg that ps3 got sold for ten of thousands up to hundred thousand yens (actually i just found one thats 160k = 16000 cdn, rest avg around $900 – $2000 cdn), and then i read another that said some dood somehow got his hands on 100 ps3s… maybe i should go line up, few days ago

*added* i think im pretty behind on movies here, casino royale is opening in dec! but wow man, i just saw the movie trailer for DOA, its MK all over, with white girls, its supposed to be 3 asian and 2 white, get it right!

pura vida chicken nanban 680yen, i had to go try because i saw it on tv and i eat chicken like everyday

Saga + International Balloon Fiesta

Saga, the prefecture of nothing! except for Saga beef i guess, and i got some giant nabe soup on the street for free, its so big that when they put cabbage in, they pour it out from a garbage bag ;p but for a city with nothing, man, there was like freakin billion people at the hot balloon festival, its soooo crowded, its crazy, they made a train station just for the festival for people to get off, hot air balloons are kinda cool, since i never seen like 50 of them all lined up or flying in together, too bad i didnt get to ride on it though… anyway, its pretty cool, got some nice pics… somewhat, too many heads in the way >.< but fook man, on the day i went, ebi-chan was in fukuoka!!! she was at her old school’s gakuensai! omfg now i will never get to see her, ever =(

Walk to Honshu – Kitakyushuu

the 2nd biggest city in Fukuoka, its actually pretty big, Kokura eki is huge, and they got monorails! but then like… i dont know, we didnt know much on what to do, the castle was under construction and it looks like a museum inside (im telling you now, himeji castle is THE best, everything original, you climb real castle stairs and you get to see ninja holes/secret passages), theres some cool looking mall that kinda looks like canal city, so then we just went to Mojiko, its famous for bananas i think? and from there, its the most northern tip of kyushuu and theres a bridge connected to honshu, and then im so awesome, i walked there, from one island to the other, and i have the tourist stamps to prove it! they built an underground tunnel, and ppl can go across, its less than 2km, and kinda weird a lot of ppl exercise down there

the cop stopped me the other day when i was riding home, and then i got a ticket for having no light, like 90% of the bikers out there, and ugh comment spam sux, i deleted like 150+ comments from over the weekend, and its so freakin cold here! its not -4 outside, but its about 16 deg inside, go no heaters

(places left to visit: oita/beppu, kagoshima, miyazaki, hiroshima, matsue)