Dinner with UH girls & Trip to Fukuoka
Welcome to Week 11! Here is a breakdown of what happened this week :)
To start off, Kylie and I finally received our ARC in the mail which allows us to leave the country and re-enter. This card was required because our D-2 Visa that we got in Hawai'i only allows us to enter the country once. Since our other friends decided to get their ARC's through Yonsei instead of booking an appointment directly through the immigration office, it will take them a couple more weeks for theirs to arrive. With this in mind, Kylie and I decided to go on a trip out of the country since we already had our cards and have been wanting to travel. Since we wanted to escape the city and go somewhere peaceful, we decided on Fukuoka as it fit the criteria we wanted and the tickets were affordable. We booked the trip for 5 days and left right after our in person class.
Before heading on our trip, the UH girls decided to grab dinner after not seeing each other for a while due to friends and family visiting. Christina and I had been wanting to visit a marinated crab restaurant since we arrived to Korea and two of our friends recommended a place that they had tried before. The food was really good but it was a little too fishy for my taste. Alongside the marinated crab, the restaurant provided a plethora of side dishes as well as stew to eat with our rice. After dinner, we all headed back to the convenience store located right under the dorm building and chatted for a while before calling it a night.
That night, I emergency packed for our Fukuoka trip as our flight was around 6:00 PM and we wanted to arrive to the airport 3 hours earlier. When we woke up, we attended class and then caught an airport bus that took us straight to our designated terminal. The flight itself was okay despite some turbulence and a rough landing. Once we landed, we immediately headed to our Airbnb and unpacked. During the five days we were there, we went to TeamLab Fukuoka, Yufuin Village, Canal City Hakata, Fukuoka Tower, baseball game, and several shrines.
My favorite day would have to be our full day tour we had booked. We had to wake up quite early to meet our tour group at the subway station. On the tour we went to Yufuin Village which is a village that is inspired by Studio Ghibli, a frog shrine, and temple. During this tour, Kylie went to her first animal cafe which was filled with shiba's. They were all so playful and they greeted us when we walked in. It was a full day tour so we got back around 7:00 PM and we were so tired so we slept early.
The next day, we went to the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks baseball game. Kylie is a big fan of baseball so this was something we were both looking forward to. This was my first ever baseball game so I had no idea what to expect. It was also crazy because the people who we sat next to were also from Hawai'i and were frequent visitors of Fukuoka. Overall, the game was very entertaining and I loved the food that they had there!
The following days consisted of a lot of shopping at Don Quijote, a quick trip to TeamLab Fukuoka which was so amazing getting to go through the different exhibits, Fukuoka Tower overlooking the city, and a bakery that I had been wanting to try.
This trip was so much fun! It went by so fast that talking about it seems like a fever dream. I hope to go on more out of country trips soon.
