travel diary: days 9-14

gosh, its been a while since i wrote an entry!

usually i would write an entry every few days, but there was some trouble a few days ago, and it kinda put me in a funk where i didn't want to do much. but now things are okay and i am feeling better!

this one will be light on pictures since discord is going to not work for embeds much longer, and that sucks >.>" so ill have to upload them somewhere else which really isnt that big of a deal im just lazy -3-

details may be a bit hazy from so many days ago, so apologies!

day 9 we rode on the shinkansen for the first time, it was super comfy and it went so fast it made my ears pop... but also we were only on there for like.... 20 minutes??? or less? to only go one town over... im not sure what my host fam was thinking bc those tickets aren't cheap, but either way it was still a really cool experience! 

the next town had a really old castle ruins there, and was home to a famous samurai~ wow, so cool~ lol. its so funny to have a little tiny buddhist temple and right across the street is a giant 10 floor mega shopping mall. the station here was also pretty cool, since the town is the hometown of the author of galaxy express 999, it was themed after it and had statues of some of the characters which was super cool too :) maetel my beloved <3

day 10 - went to a park with just my mom and i, and it was really calming. the park was made around a lake with a path through some little islands down the middle with some bridges connecting them. so we had a little stroll and then visited a little gift shop but didn't find anything interesting. we kept walking and ended up by the NHK building for our region where we watched a segment get filmed live! that was really cool to see those big cameras in action :) NHK has a bunch of mascot characters, and one of my friends really loves domo-kun, the little brown guy with a big mouth, so i asked the staff there if they had any little things i could take home for her and they gave me sooo much stuff, which was so nice of them ;w;
after that, right next door was another shrine, so i went to get another stamp for my book. while on the shrine grounds, there was a ceremony taking place for a couple who just had a new baby as well as a family getting pictures taken and the kids were dressed in really cute kimono! 
...unfortunately when i was done and came back to the entrance there was a strange man talking to my mom and he talked about how much he liked american women or smth it was so creepy and weird... eventually he left and we gtfoed back home.

as if this wasnt enough, later at home my host father pulled us aside and said that his wife was feeling really fatigued from having people around so much... i felt sooooo bad and it was hard to eat dinner that night :( i felt so guilty, we cant raelly change our plans to leave earlier or really do anything to help... so i ended up kinda shutting myself away in my room in attempt to make my presence as small as possible. so we ended on a really low note, but thankfully things wouldnt be so bad for too long.

day 11, we still felt kinda down after the events of last night so i took us to the mall for another shopping day. i picked up a lot of gifts for my friends and a few things for myself too~ it was pretty fun! we waited in this really long line for food, but it turned out it was for a specific restruant and we didnt need to be there after all @_@;;; and then had to wait AGAIN for the actual food we wanted, which was ramen! it was super yummy :3 altho i wish it had more slices of pork hehe
things kinda smoothed over for dinner since we gave everyone lots of personal time and we all watched tv together after and had a good time. yay!

i also started my plans to go visit some other cities, and booked hotels and stuff... super stressful @.@ but writing it out helped a lot, and everything turned out okay in the end.

after everyone got ready for bed, my host mom and i watched this show on tv where they ranked the top 10 songs from showa, heisei, and reiwa eras of anime and we tried to guess them all. i was right about heisei and reiwa but only knew a few of the showa ones. it was a nice bonding moment for us two i think :) and a really cute memory

day 12 didnt have much going on during the day other than finally eating some fluffy pancakes (they were so good), but at night we had dinner at a really fancy place with the whole family, and i got to give out the gifts we brought from america to the grandkids :) they were really all shy, but eventually opened up and the youngest one even came to sit on my lap and tell me about his favorite shows and what he was learning in school. i let him play doodle jump on my phone and he really liked it lol. i told the other two that if they ever needed help with english hw to let me know and ill help them :) 

day 13 we took a train to a different town down south a little ways and went on a boat tour of the canal system there. it was also a festival day for "health and sports day" but im not sure if the two were related? maybe not. either way, they had drums and people chanting up on a big parade float that went down the streets of the city. a bunch of the local people waved at our boat and that made me feel a little better about being a tourist lmfao. we did a little browsing around the town which was famous for its eel but i wasnt brave enough to try any so we just got some food at the conbini, but our train home arrived too quickly and we didnt get to eat the whole way home which sucked lol. but then when we got home, the croquette sandwhich i got turned out to be just... a bunch of mashed potatoes inside a slice of bread... i was so dissapointed LOL but actual dinner was really good so all is well. 


day 14 is today for me, and so far all i have done is pack up my suitcase and write this post. its been kinda hard since today is the last day that we will be staying with my host family. i really really loved being here and i am so sad that i am going to leave. i really, truly believe i want to be here forever. travelling places always gives me anxiety and combined with the sadness of leaving someone you may not see again for a long time makes it all the more difficult. but i have to look ahead to the future and keep my head high. there is so much more fun stuff to see in the next week and it would be a shame to let some sadness get in the way of that. so next update will be way more fun! (i hope...) thank you fukuoka city, i love you! hopefully i will come visit again soon.