This entry has been kindly contributed by Tim.
---
January 4th:
Fujita Sensei invited Mary (and by proxy, myself) over to her house for lunch. Her house, unlike the vast majority of Japanese houses, is quite spacious, complete with many rooms of tatami mats and sliding doors/walls. In fact, there were two stories, and she and her family seem to enjoy the finer things in life, such as those cool massage chairs that you go to the store (i.e. Yamada) to sit in and then don't buy.
For lunch she served us a plentiful bounty of food for temakizushi. Temakizushi is where you roll the food yourself in seaweed to create your own sushi. I avoided the seaweed (and for that matter, the seafood) and ate the rice, vegetables, and meats by themselves. She served sashimi (raw fish - octopus, squid, and others), shrimp, ham, egg, cucumber, asparagus, lettuce greens, pork, sausage, and rice, as well as soup, tea, and six different types of cake. Food heaven... just ask Mary. It was comical on the several occasions that Mary overstuffed her sushi.
The remainder of the day consisted of FOUR hours of karaoke MADNESS at SunSpa, a quick a la cart bite at SunSpa, and taiko drums and video games at Jusco.
January 5th:
Today we went to Sasebo, a few stops down the line from Huis Ten Bosch. It is one of the largest cities in the Nagasaki prefecture, and it is mostly known for three things. First, it is a United States Navy Base (and, consequently, there are a lot of gaijin... uh, foreigners there). Second, they have a kilometer-long arcade, the longest of its kind in Japan. And third, this is the home of the Sasebo Burger (the origin of hamburgers in Japan).
After exiting the eki, Mary and I strolled toward the arcade. On the way, we spotted a fairly interesting building, the city's convention center. Then we arrived at our first destination just outside the arcade... Mike's Tex-Mex. We totally had to see if it was worthy of the name Tex-Mex. What's the verdict, Mary? Mary says that the beef should have been fajita meat, but other than that it was muy bueno. (But then again, any half-decent stuff put in front of her that isn't the day in, day out Japanese is probably wonderful. Not that she doesn't love the day in, day out Japanese food...)
The eki.
Is Mary that strong? Or are cars sometimes parked/stored vertically? You choose.
Next, we took a bus to Saikai National Park, home of the 99 Islands (the number 99 represents, basically, a lot in Japanese... it is actually 208 islands). We took the Pearl Queen 50 minute cruise through the islands and experienced it first-hand. The pictures speak for themselves.
After the boat tour, Mary and I entered the museum. There were OK historical exhibits on past ships, but this was also somewhat filler time. But oh wait! We didn't see this... there's a freakin' awesome aquarium. There were sea animals, such as fish and turtles, that were our size. In addition there were eels, rays, sharks, and the like.
Fish or frog? Maybe both. Long live King Yellow Fish Frog Guy!
Back in the city, we strolled through the arcade. (Well, we walked, but isn't strolling so much cooler?) There were a million, bajillion shops, and most of them wanted me to buy food or clothing. I did the best window shopping I could. Then, Mary and I went to Lucky Burger, where I got... guess what... a hamburger! It is basically like a hamburger in the States, but it has this extra strange (but good) sauce on it.
On the way back to the eki (that's station, in case you didn't catch it the first time) Mary and I stopped at the convention center. Now it was nightfall, and the waterfall had an additional feature... you could create light and sound through an interface. Needless to say, we had ourselves a little fun.
Back in Omura the fun didn't stop. Why not go bowling (which we stunk it up that night) followed by yet another round of purikura?
January 6th:
On a rainy Saturday (which was freezing cold, by the way), we decided to stay in Omura for the day. We filled our time with wonderful enjoyment, including lunch at SunSpa, video games at Sega World (did I mention MORE purikura?), karaoke at SunSpa for... yes... FOUR hours, fun at Jusco, Skylark Gusto for dinner (where we played poker for an hour and a half), and then rode back to the apartment in the SNOW (flurries, but I'm from Texas, so dangit it's snow!). Shiyes!
Our karaoke room. Did someone say free drink bar??!? A rare treat (really).
In many Japanese restaurants, this is the MAGICAL button to get the attention of the waitress.
whaaa?? i just posted a comment and it's not there. okay, repost!!! so i was looking through all your wonderful pictures, and then suddenly, i was mesmerized by the yellow fish-frog thingy. you know me, i'm always fascinated by funny lookin stuff. i'm tempted to import one from japan and raise it myself. that would have been a cool pet to bring for show-and-tell back in elemnentary school! i don't know why, but when i saw the fish-frog thingy, i immediately thought of panero...
Posted by: Lauren | January 22, 2007 at 06:38 AM