Tuesday, 23rd December

Chrissy: Today we went to a different area of Fukuoka to try to find Kinokunia and do some other shopping. We found the building it was supposed to be in, but it wasn't there. It turned out to be the most frivolous shopping plaza I've ever seen. Perfume, cosmetics and a ridiculous amount of clothes shops. No bookshops, no food shops, no chemists, carpenters or any other kind of shop. It was the worst.

We found a bookshop in the building next door. It wasn't Kinokunia, but it might as well have been because it was so well-stocked and had exactly what we were looking for - a Japanese version of Tintin for Emi's 7-year-old nephew. Also I found an actually good clothes shop where I bought a really nice - and really cheap - red coat. It's amazing.

Charles:
We also had a donut from MR DONUT. It was pretty good. Bookshops in Japan are different. There are bookshops everywhere and most of them are books for people to read on trains. They look like libraries with rows of shelves full of identically sized books. The only sections we can see is the broad difference between plain coloured normal books and zany manga. These kind of bookshops have no kids books and are totally useless for us.

Also how come Chrissy can find a rad coat for 3000 yen and Chucky can only find one for CONSIDERABLY more. Mysteries of fashion.

THE STORY CONTINUES.

We had our longest shinkansen trek ever back to Emi's place. having gotten back to Hakata station, we had to take a 2.5 hour trip to Osaka. Then we got directly onto another shinkansen which took 1.5 hours to get to Mikawa-Anjo station. The second trip was nicer because we got to see Kyoto again out the window. Yay Kyoto tower! Yay world's biggest tin shed!

We got to the station at 6:09 and Emi was waiting for us at the gate with her Mum in the car. We were really happy to see them again! Travelling is fun but its nice to see familiar faces. We went home and presented presents to the family and the kids.

Dinner was enormous because it was a celebration for (big) Emi's birthday. Yum. Their food is the best. (Especially the miso soup)

After dinner, Moka-chan kept asking Chrissy "yonde kudasai! yonde kudasai!" (read to me! read to me!) so Chrissy had to battle through a bit of Frog and Toad which was luckily in Hiragana. Hopefully Moka-chan understood the words because we didn't. We also had fireworks (I think birthday celebrations as well). These were fun. Japanese fireworks are similar but somewhat more dangerous than ours. Yikes!

We had a bath and then watched an episode of our new favourite drama with (normal) Emi. The drama is called Zettai Kareshi (absolute boyfriend) and is about a girl who volunteers for a trial of a robot entirely dedicated to love. Deep philosophical exploration of what it means to be human. Not. We have been watching this and some other shows on the trains on the small lappy.

Anyway, we remembered that we left a lot of stuff here and have been going through it throwing useless things out. Carrying our bags has lessened our love of useless things.