Random day trip to Fukuoka/Space World!

Yesterday (Sunday) was one of those extremely spontaneous days that turns out to be really awesome.

I woke up yesterday morning at around 10:00am and decided I wanted to have a productive day doing some work on a few side projects I have. I even scheduled everything out so I could get some real work done. Well low and behold at 11:00am right after I finished showering and eating breakfast I get text messaged from both Chison and Asuka telling me to be ready by noon because we were going on an "adventure" today with Vega and Kelvin.

Being the "yes" man that I am I was obviously all for it and and got ready for w/e they decided we were going to do for the day.

At 12:15ish I met Vega downstairs and told him that Kelvin couldn't go because he didn't have any money. Asuka and Chison said that wouldn't be an issue so I called Kelvin 3-4 times trying to get a hold of him so we could all leave. Unfortunately Kelvin did not have his phone on him so his part in this adventure is now over :(. Sad face.

Alright, so we then head out on our adventure and Vega and I are informed that we are going to a theme park in Fukuoka called "Space World." Basically a six flag-esque theme park. What a crazy turn out for a day that was going to be spent working in front of a computer screen! Fukuoka is the largest and most popular city in southern Japan and it is about 2 hours away from my Japanese University. So basically this was a mini road trip!





Now if any of you upstanding American citizens have been reading the wall street journal, you will know that in southern Japan it has been raining pretty much non stop for two weeks now. Sunday however, was the first time sunshine had been seen in weeks so I am very glad we decided to take advantage of it!

Since we were on a 2 hour road trip, we decided to take a stop at a gas station for some refreshments, and Vega found some Fanta flavored gum, and I found a LOT of fried food. Now I will admit, I didn't buy/eat any of the fried food, but I was sorely tempted.

 

Weird yet delicious.

I wanted all of it :(

Our lovely chaperones for the day.

I think this lady hated me, but Chison and Asuka wouldn't tell me what she was saying. :(

The story with the old lady is pretty simple and in all honesty she probably didn't say anything about me at all. HOWEVER, I did hear her say "America" and then Chison and Asuka started laughing quite a bit, so I immediately assumed that the nice old lady was talking trash. I guess I will never know what really happened in that 7 eleven on that sunny Sunday afternoon....

We were then back in the car heading towards Space World! The rest of the car ride was pretty uneventful. Just a bunch of almost getting lost and almost dying because Asuka is a crazy driver (more on that later).

Fast forward a bit. We had finally arrived! Look how pleased we looked to finally be entering the park!

Vega and I caught Asuka trying to take a candid photo :P

We had officially arrived! The first ride we chose to go on was called "The Titan" and for some reason I decided to take a picture of the rule board and not the actual ride. I have no excuse for this.

Anyway, this ride was actually really fun, and REALLY long. The ride must have lasted more than a minute long. Oh another strange tidbit about Japanese theme parts...there are NOT that many people there on a Sunday afternoon. Nothing compared to an American theme park on any given day. It was strange.

We then ventured over to a famous ride called "The Venus" I took a video of the line and tried to talk to Vega about how quiet and orderly everything seemed, but I was drowned out by the ride operator shouting his nonsense.

Venus was actually a pretty intense ride because it was just constant circles. Also, I kept thinking I was going to hit my head on the support beams. It felt that most of these rides were designed for smaller people :/.

OH, I almost forgot to mention a really funny conversation I had with Vega while we were walking around the park. Keep in mind it was REALLY hot and humid outside yesterday.

Vega: Oh wow that pool water looks amazing
Me (after looking towards the pool): OH God! Why are there so many naked kids!??!
Vega: Oh s**t! I didn't see them.
Me: mmmhmmm. Vega wants to swim with the naked kids....
Vega: (facepalm)

I laughed at him for a good 5 minutes after that. Poor Vega.

Our next ride....was one of those "white water rapid" rides where you are bound to get wet, which made me a very unhappy camper, but being the great guy I am I decided to go with them on the ride.

So if you notice, the guy to the right of me in this picture is not Vega, that is because we had an extra couple accompany us on this ride to fill up the raft thing. Funny thing happened on this ride. For the most part Vega, Chison, Asuka, and I did a great job avoiding water. The poor couple to my right did not fare so well. During our ride we had ONE huge wave crash over our raft, and it just so happened that the raft spun the unsuspecting couple RIGHT into it. I will never forget the terror in that innocent couples eyes as the water came crashing against there faces. I truly do not think they heard me burst out laughing before they reoriented themselves. , but either way, they got owned. I sort of felt bad, but I was also VERY happy it wasn't me. They were amazing sports about it though, so hats off to them, wherever they are.

At this point the park was getting close to closing time (6:00pm) so we decided to take a few quick photos and head out to eat.

If I ever wore a dress and a Garlic shaped hat...this is what I'd look like.

Like I said, we then decided to go get food since all 4 of us had been hungry since noon, but we just hadn't been able to find anywhere we could all agree on. VEGA ONLY WANTED MCDONALDS OMG.

Here is video proof.

Eventually we found this really cool 10 story mall that had a lot of restaurants to choose from. We all finally agreed on a quaint little place called Moby Dick. Moby Dick had some really funny "engrish" on one of the walls of its restaurant detailing how "fresh" their fish is.

I decided to order this interesting looking dish that turned out to be absolutely AMAZING. My stomach still misses its amazingness. Let me paint you a picture with words then I will provide an actual picture. So it starts out with a bunch of fried rice, that fried rice is then covered with scrambled eggs. Then several pieces of pork are put on top of the scrambled eggs. Then to top it all off they put some Japanese curry on top of it. Now Japanese curry reminds me of mild chili and is delicious.

It was SO GOOD. Phew, well after dinner Asuka asked us all kindly if she could go shoe shopping since we were here. Since she had driven so much today at our expense we graciously accepted her request. It didn't stop me from making a small video of her. Oh and funny side note, she didn't even buy anything, but Vega did. 

After the shopping we then left the mall and headed back to Beppu. On the way we DID stop by McDonalds to get some ice cream and to get Vega a burger. 


We got back to APU at 11:00pm and called it a successful day.




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