Life in Fukuoka, Japan: Potluck, Tenjin and Typhoon

Potluck, Tenjin and Typhoon

This past week seemed to go by so quickly, but my three day weekend went even quicker. I have always heard that as we get older time seems to go by so much quicker. I really am starting to believe this. My grandmother told me this when I was younger and the other day when I was Skyping with her we talked about it. Her mother had told her the same thing. It is funny that when I was a kid it took forever for a school day to end.

Friday evening we had a potluck sponsored by the FIS PTA. It was from 6:30-7:30 PM. Mark and I went home right after school so that I could make my caprese salad. We also freshened up and then it was time to head out. I have to say that the weather when we headed to the subway really gave me hope. It was a little breezy and cool. This is one of the first times that I actually thought it felt cooler than in the past month and a half. Could it be a sign of autumn coming soon? Let's hope so. It had been raining on and off all day, but we lucked out on our way to the potluck- no rain. We arrived about 10 minutes late. Mark just couldn't decide what to wear. (Just kidding) When we arrived it was a full house. There was food from so many different countries. The potluck was held in the Annex building and was in the main lobby area. It was nice to see so many familiar faces and to have a chance to chat with people I hadn't seen during the week. Once the potluck was over we began to walk to the subway. Now it was beginning to sprinkle. Luckily for us it wasn't a heavy rain. We made it to the subway and back to our house without getting too wet.

Saturday I was able to sleep in until 6:40. I know that to some of you that is not sleeping in at all, but for me that was an extra hour and 40 minutes worth of sleep. It was heavenly. I almost felt guilty for being a little “lazy”. Mark and I had planned on going into Tenjin for the day and investigating all of the stores below the street shopping areas in the subway. It is an underground shopping area that has 600 meters of stores. Here is a link you can go to http://yokanavi.com/eg/landmark/index/668 so that you can see the area. We found some good shops.

There are a couple of Kaldi stores which sell coffee and many imported items. I even found one can of refried beans and some vegetarian curry sauce. It is so funny to see all of the Halloween candies, pumpkin decorations, bags and other foods available. From what I have heard Halloween is a big deal at school. I will never understand that at all. For those of you who know me you know that I am not a fan of Halloween (except for all of the candy). It will be interesting to see what all really happens for Halloween. You know I will blog about it.

OK, back to our underground shopping experience.....I would say that about 85%-90% of the stores are stores for women. They have clothing shops, sock and legging shops, shoes, make-up, scarves and just about everything in between. They have some very cute styles for autumn. If only I were younger and more slender then I could buy some of the outfits. I will have to get some photos to share. I didn't get many there because Mark didn't want to look too “touristy”. We were looking for a nice place to eat lunch, but the places we saw catered to many “smoking” customers, and I just can't deal with smoke in restaurants. It reminds me of in the US when I was a child and some tables were smoking and some were not smoking. The smoke still travels around the restaurant. There are really not too many of these places around that I have been in. If I see any smokers I just say no to eating there. I guess I am a clean air snob. The cleaner the better for me.

We decided since we couldn't find a place to eat we would stop at Freshness Burger on our way home. I love the bean patty sandwich. It is so “fresh” and delicious!!! One day I will take a photo. I think you would all agree that it looks healthy and fresh. Mmmmmmmmmmmm...I have now been there three times. After our late lunch we headed home. It had been raining all day, but we did not notice since we were nice and dry below ground.

Once we got home we put our stuff away, fed the cats, and hit the road again. Our goal was to find the Sakoda store and get some storage furniture (shelf units, a computer desk, bookshelves, etc.) We had a nice walk to he store. We were finally able to see some of the area right near our apartment. The entire time we were walking to the store it was raining lightly on and off. It was very comfortable outside which made the trip more doable. There is a store called Foodway. We popped in to see what their prices were like. We found out that it is a very large grocery store and some of the prices are definitely lower than some of the stores we normally shop. Since it was rainy we didn't want to get groceries that we would have to lug around the other store we were going to shop.

Sakoda and Foodway share a very large parking lot. Sakoda is a two level store that has everything you could imagine for sale. They have furniture, pet supplies, imported foods, kitchen items, plants, school supplies and may more things. We were not doing very well selecting things for our house. The only thing that we bought for storage was two bookshelves. We had to arrange to have them delivered since we knew we couldn't carry them home, and we were not sure if we would find a taxi. While we were there filling out the delivery information we heard loud, blaring voices through a megaphone. They were having a “timed sale” we were told from the young man helping us. He spoke English so he was very helpful. He gave us one of his cards so that when we are there we can ask for him to assist us. I took a short video of the sale, hopefully it will play for you. All I can say is that it was SOOOOO loud.

We finally headed home. Mark was leading the way since we both did not know a particular route to follow. We ended up going a little way out of our way....and then a little more out of the way, but all in all it was a nice walk and I can always use the exercise.

Home again, home again....it was nice to be home and relax. I had been walking in wet shoes for quite awhile now.

Sunday was the big day that Robyn and I were going to venture out to see if we could take public transportation to Costco. Now, I need to tell you that we heard many different horror stories about people trying the same thing. One would think that we would probably just believe them and leave well enough alone.....but not us. We were bound and determined to find a way to go their on our own when ever we wanted to. It was our chance to show that we could be more independent and get what we needed. The plan was to head out early so we could beat the crowd.

I left my apartment at about 8:45 and went to the subway. I was going only one stop and then Robyn would meet me there and we would continue on to Tenjin. Gandhali joined us on the subway to Tenjin, but then she left to catch a different line to head to a festival at one of the temples. We made it to Tenjin easily and then we just needed to find the correct bus. I had been told that we needed 27B. We found it. So far things were going pretty well. I was beginning to be hopeful that all would turn out well. The bus ride was going in the right direction and we were following our route on my Google maps app. Then we hit our first snag. The bus pulled into this little gravel lot with about three buses already there. Everyone got off the bus. Now we were a little confused. When we were getting off the bus we asked for “Torius” which is where Costco is located. The driver said “no”and then took us to the little bus stop and showed us the other 27B bus that would be coming. We would have to wait about 15 to 20 minutes. Luckily it was a covered bus stop. It had been raining all morning.

We waited and then we got on the next 27B bus that came along. We were not sure exactly where it would drop us at the Costco area. Robyn saw the sign for Torius so we hopped off the bus. Now, it was raining pretty steady and we had to walk a short ways to get to the footbridge to cross the road. I was still doing pretty well because I wasn't soaking wet which is always a good thing. We saw Costco in the distance and knew we had made it. We were very happy and hungry at this point.

As we were walking into Costco we saw the group of teachers who drove in the van. They were all nice and dry and heading back home after their shopping trip. We said hello and let them know we made it to Costco in one hour and fifteen minutes. That was pretty, or at least we thought it was. Once we were in Robyn went and picked up her new glasses. They looked great on her. They really have some nice looking frames at Costco. That is good to know in case I have to get new glasses while I am in Japan.

Once she had the glasses adjusted we went to get some food at the food court. We decided to eat and then shop. Now, I just have to set the stage here. By now it was almost 11:30 and the food court was PACKED. I can't emphasize that enough. I could not believe how crowded it was. We had a long line to stand in to order our food. I was happy that it did move rather quickly. I ordered a slice of cheese pizza and Robyn ordered a hot dog. It was standing room only at the table area. We had to stand to eat our food. I honestly think their food court area is much larger than the ones in the states yet it was still packed. Robyn got a few photos which I will try to get to share with you. I won't have them attached to this blog though.

It was now time to shop. I was so happy because I knew what I wanted and knew that I could only buy what would fit into my trolley cart. I was very aware of the size of the items I was buying. The one thing I didn't take into consideration was the weight of the items. Ugghhhhh...what was I thinking, or more like not thinking? Any how, I was a happy person while I was shopping even though there were millions of people all around me. No, I am not exaggerating......there really were millions of people or at least it seemed like it. Sometimes I was at a stand still because there was no room to walk at all. It is not good to begin shopping too late at Costco here. I decided to make my way to pay and get out while I could. I paid and then went out front to put all of my items in my trolley. This took some creative thinking. I opened and put my Amy's burritos in lose instead of in their boxes. This saved a lot of space. Here is when I realize that my food was very heavy! I had olive oil, spaghetti sauce, salsa, shampoo and conditioner, face cream, bread and a few other items. I could not even hardly move my trolley. I knew I would have to, but wow I should have been smarter than that.

Robyn was right behind me with her stuff and we were on our way to the bus stop. As we were walking out we noticed a very long line along the side of Costco, it was all of the people who were waiting to get into Costco. I couldn't believe it. They had to wait for people to leave so they would have carts. I have never experienced anything like this before.

We saw where we needed to go and we were so happy that it seemed to be working out so well. Hahahahaaaa....key word - “seemed”. We got to the bus stop (remember it is still raining all this time) and sat down. We looked at the sign and were so happy to see that bus 27B did come to this stop. We were then looking at the sign more closely and we saw that the next bus was not due to come until 2:22. It was about 1:35, we would have over 45 minutes to wait. That seemed like forever. 45 mintues...had we only known what time the bus came we could have planned out the shopping around that time. We didn't know though. Now I knew what Kevin was talking about when he said the one bus only comes once per hour. We had been sucked into the deceptive little time killer of the bus. There were a lot of cars going into the Costco shopping area. Some of the cars were so close to the sidewalk that they splashed us with water. By now my shoes were soaking wet. A taxi had gone by us but we wanted to see if we could wait for the bus. As we kept sitting at the bus station we decided to give a taxi a try. Of course then there were none to be found. We headed back to the bus stop and waited for the bus. Luckily for us a man came along who spoke English and he did tell us that the bus we were getting on would take us right into Tenjin. That was music to our ears. Finally, the bus came and we were on it. We were a little nervous when the bus pulled into that same gravel lot. Thank goodness we didn't have to get off the bus.

We made it into Tenjin and went to go to the station. We couldn't find the elevator so I had to manage with my 100 ton trolley down the stairs. I did it, but at what cost to my back. Ouch! I was so happy to be at the station. We ran to Kaldi so Robyn could get her decaf coffee beans and then we were headed for our train. Yes, we had made it.

We knew that this was not a very practical way to get to Costco. I have to say that I concede to Kevin T. that he was RIGHT about a Costco day taking 6 hours. I never would have believed it if I hadn't experienced it myself. I left at 8:45 AM and got home at 4:15 PM. I was exhausted and sore. I had to get the trolley up and down the stairs at my subway, too.

Once I was home Mark and I had to run across the street for a few groceries since Monday was supposed to be a very stormy day with Typhoon Sanba.

Finally, I was home for the day and ready to relax. I was so tired when I went to bed.

Today is Sunday. I was ready for the typhoon weather. It was so windy. Not near as rainy as I thought it was going to be. In fact, at first this morning it wasn't even raining at all. We could see that there were not many people outside. We really needed to get to Nitori to buy some furniture things that we did not get at Sakoda the day before. Of course by this time it had started to rain. We headed to the subway area to get a taxi. The wind was very strong. The wind gust was what got to us. We made it safely and then hit the stores. We bought a desk, clothes shelves for the closets, a new kitchen rack that is much wider and higher than the one we have right now. We also bought an ironing board, some things that go on the racks that make it easier to store things. Everything will be delivered on Wednesday. We will finally be able to unpack our boxes.

We tried a new restaurant for us today. It was called Chang Chang. We never know what we are ordering, but we just take it all in stride. We both ordered different “meals” that came with rice, noodles, veggies, meat and so much more. Obviously, Mark had to eat most of the things since I did not eat any of the meat things. Then we walked home. We tried to get a taxi but there were none to be had. It was a windy and damp walk home. It rained on and off, but mostly it felt very misty.

I was glad to get home. I cleaned the bathroom and did some planning for school. I really need to get all of my school stuff to school because it is so hard to trolley it each day. Tomorrow will be a subway day with my trolley.

The weather should be better tomorrow. I am looking forward to that.

I have attached some photos and they may or may not go with the blog, but they are all from Thursday through today.

As I was typing this I realize how much time I have spent typing. I think my brain got tired because I did not add all of the humorous things that happened the past couple of days. Once thing that was funny was that Robyn lost not one umbrella but two umbrellas. She lost the first one so she bought another one, then she lost that one too. It was funny at the time.

More to come this week.