28 March 2009
Got up early and packed my stuff as well as the futons. Brought the stuff down and headed to Mt. Aso with some of the Japanese students. Our first stop was to the Soba-making Dojo where we were supposed to make our own lunch. However, on the way there, we were lucky enough(according to the guide) to view this sight as it was time for the farmers to clear the dry grass so that the new grass would grow to feed their cows. So we stopped by to take a few pictures before heading to our planned route.
And this is the end result of my very own hand-made soba:
Looks good? It tastes even better. LOL. And after that, we headed to Mt. Aso to view one of the world's active volcano. But before that, we took a short break and we managed to get luxury of eating bbq-ed horse meat.
It tasted like beef. Wanted to try the raw one, Basashi, but we didn't have the chance to. Blah! Anyways, after resting, we continued our journey to Mt. Aso and this is how one of the volcano's hotspot look like:
After seeing Mt. Aso, we headed to the resort where we will be parting our Japanese friends and would also be spending the night at. Took some pictures with them before saying Sayonara to them.
So after saying our goodbyes, we headed to our rooms to unpack and relax for the night. Here's how our rooms looked like and my view outside the room:
We then had dinner and went to the hot spring to relax before hitting the bed.
29 March 2009
Woke up and packed our stuff before heading out to the strawberry farm to pick strawberries. And this is how much strawberries we had there:
And if we had any more strawberries, I think I'll avoid it for a year. LOL. After that, we headed to Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine to pray for our studies.
Took a slip of paper there and I asked the guide what it means. And because of that slip of paper, I decided to withdraw myself out of the Java Certification course because I had no time to study. LOL.
After visiting the shrine, we then made our way to NHK Fukuoka Broadcasting Center to see how the TV station do some cool camera effects.
I guess some of these ideas could be included to my FlexCam project. LOL. So after seeing how they do the camera effects, we then headed to Fukuoka Tower to see some really cool robots at ROBOSQUARE.
And on the way up there, we saw this cool sign:
It's something which Singapore doesn't have! And after that, we headed to Marinoa City Fukuoka to settle our dinner and do some little shopping before heading to our new hotel to spend the night. And this is how the night view of Fukuoka looks like:
30 March 2009
Took our 1 Day Green Bus Pass down to breakfast with us because it's our free and easy day. This 1 Day Green Bus Pass is like our bus concession for 1 day.
However, we only used it twice because we spent most of our time walking instead of taking the bus. I'll let the pictures do the talking:
All these pictures were taken while we were walking from Yahoo Dome Iriguchi all the way to Nishitetsu Grand Hotel-mae. I think we've walked like more than 10km in that day alone. We then settled our dinner in a ramen shop near our hotel.
It was the best ramen I've eaten so far in my life. Oh, and did I mentioned that behind our hotel, is the red-light district of Fukuoka. It's damn cool and is totally different from the red-light district in Singapore. So after our meals, we took a walk around the hotel before heading back to pack our stuff as we are leaving Japan the next day. Blah!
31 March 2009
Left the hotel and went to the airport to catch our plane. Some of our Japanese friends came and they brought us some gifts. After that, we parted our ways and headed back to Singapore. On the plane, I watched these two movies:
I know they are old shows, but the other shows didn't really interests me.
So that's what I've been doing in Japan, and Japan would surely be one of the destinations on my holiday list in the future. =)
