I went to Fukuoka......again

Once again it is time for my “I went to Fukuoka” weekly update. This definitely proved to be one of my best trips yet as it was a day filled with friends, fun, shopping and a lot of people.

As usual the morning started out with a 5:30am wake up call and by 6am I was pedaling to the bus stop in the dark, 6 degrees Celsius weather. Getting on the bus was a wonderful feeling because the bus has really good heating, I quickly nodded off to sleep. It was 15 minutes later that I was quickly awoken by a blast of cold air, it seems the woman in front of me thought it would be the most genius idea of the morning to open her window, while we were speeding down the highway at 100km/h. She also thought it would be a good idea to play her walkman loud enough so that the rest of the bus could enjoy her music along with her. She finally shut her window, but the bus driver had turned the heating off….. I had to wear my gloves and scarf all the way to Fukuoka.

Arriving in Fukuoka I ran off to Starbucks to meet Rick and Satoko for our regular Sunday morning coffee, then we headed off to Church.
Church finished and it was at that time the Church’s caroling group lined the street outside our Church (there is always a lot of people walking down this street) and sang Christmas carols in Japanese and English for 10 minutes, it was really nice! Caroling finished and we gathered the youth guys together to head off to lunch, it was at this point we got involved in a 15 minute debate about where to actually eat lunch… we finally decided on that cool Thai place. Lunch was fantastic, we really have an awesome group of people in our youth group and we have some fantastic conversations, lunch with the whole group is always an event to look forward to. We all stayed together in that Restaurant for probably 2 hours eating and talking, it was time to leave.

One lady who came with us is 25 and she has a four year old daughter. Little, cute 4 year old daughter was very tired from a big day out with the grown ups, so she fell asleep. Her Mum was having a difficult time carrying her so I offered to carry her (the daughter) for a while, Mum gladly accepted. I carefully took hold of the little girl and held her the way I have been taught after many hours of child care work. The little girl wrapped her arms around my neck and snuggled her head into my shoulder and fell asleep, that is when I started getting the looks from passer bys. Obviously her Mum was walking next to me along with the rest of the group, but the general idea (to passer bys) was that I was this little girls Dad, at one stage I heard comments along the lines of “hey check out the Gaijin Dad!” it was interesting to say in the least.

Most people went their separate ways, but Rick, Erin and I went to do some Christmas shopping. During the Christmas shopping I ran into my very good Exchange student friends, I split from Rick and Erin to head off with the Exchange students. I was unbelievably happy to be with the Exchange students, I foster a great fondness for their friendship and it is very rare I get to see them so we had a very good time together.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and I had to go catch the bus home. I am hoping to be able to see them all before I leave for Australia.

Jieshi