This week I haven´t had access to the internet and I have been so busy so I haven´t been able to either write or upload. So this week comes in one single big log. By the way, you might have noticed that there are a lot of misspellings. It is mostly missing letters because of the difficult laptop keyboard. It is very frustrating. Another frustrating thing is that I have noticed that my photos are filling up the space on the harddrive at a worrying speed. Two thirds are filled already and it hasn´t been more than a couple of weeks. Either I will have to buy an extra harddrive or delete a lot of pictures. Both ways are painful...

Have you ever eaten shoecream? Well I was asked if I wanted to eat some. Or so I thought anyway. It turned out that "shuu-kuriimu" was a kind of pastry that was delicious. And although the kuriimu in "shuu-kuriimu" comes from the English word cream the shuu doesn´t come from shoe but is an original Japanese word. It´s a funny thing with foreign words in Japanese, If you search a bit you can find a lot of words that means funny things in Swedish. In Kagoshima I saw a box with ASKUL (very funny) written on it, this week I saw a speaker with TOA (toilet) written on it, and in Sapporo there was a convenience store close to where I lived that was named SPAR (as in save money). And of course there are more words that I can´t remember now. Thinking of Swedish by the way, there is a commercial that I have seen a few times on tv here in Fukuoka with the Swedish children´s song "en sockerbagare" sung by a young girl as the background music. Of course it had nothing to do with the commercial where a little girl was running around with a growing apple...

One funny thing about Japan is the toilets. I am sure you have heard about the high-tech toilets with water spraying and different sounds to conceal your "natural" sounds. But besides that I have discovered that there is a great variety of toilets other than that. In Sapporo I first came across the tap on top of the toilet where the water going to the container (from where it is later used for flushing) flows through so that you can wash your hands in the water before the next flush and by doing so saving water. Recently I saw I toilet with the hole in the bottom of the bowl blocked by a lid and you pulled a lever to fill the bowl with as much water as you like and then pull another lever to open the lid so that it flushed down. Then there are varieties of the toilet on the ground where you have to stand up doing your business. Also there is the slipper-thing. No matter how small the toilet is there are slippers to be worn while you are in there. On small toilets that means you step in the slippers and turn around and sit down. On larger toilets it is easy to forget that you wear them. It is a typical foreigner-thing to go to the toilet and then come out and walk around in the house with the toilet slippers. Fortunately I learned to be careful with that last year.

Another funny thing is that when you go from one city to another you may very well not noticing leaving the first one before you arrive at your destination. Since Japan is so densely populated the large cities are connected with the cities around it and non-urban areas are hard to find. Hokkaido is special however. It is the least densely populated part of Japan. A lot of things are different in Hokkaido by the way. The climate is near that in Sweden only the winters have heavy snowfall as in northern Sweden and the summers are hotter than in southern Sweden. Well that is what I have experienced anyway. If you ask a Japanese person they might well tell you that Hokkaido isn´t really Japan. 

The best part of being in Fukuoka was of course seeing Emma and we have seen lot of great things together. The first day we went together with Emma´s friend Mari to Monjikou in the northeast part of Kyushu where there are tunnels and bridges connecting Kyushu to Honshu. If you are unfamiliar with Japanese geography Japan consists of four main islands and Kyushu is the island in the southwest and Honshu is the main island. There were interesting buildings there and you could tell it was an old port city. Among other things we saw a collection of examples of how people smuggle things and forgeries of well known brands beside beside the real things so that you could compare. It was interesting. That was also the day when I ate "shoecream". We also bought bananas from a guy who sold bananas in a kind of auction. I didn´t really understand how it worked but Emma managed to press down the price for a pack of bananas to 200 yen and then got some extra bananas that weren´t as high quality as a bonus. Then I ate some fugu (the famous blowfish that you have to have a license to prepare because there is leathal poison in it in some places). I only ate some dried stuff for free however. Maybe the poison one is a special kind of fugu. After that I bought some Mumin candy (also known as Moomin). Emma informed me of the differences between the original Nordic Mumin and the Japanese one. For starters, while the original Mumin is white or light grey and speaks no less than a normal person, the Japanese Mumin is light blue and doesn´t speak much at all (thereby becoming cute in an animal like way). Also the Mumin world and the events going on is much cuter and brightly colored in Japan. Anyway, then we went to se a castle but I forgot it´s name. It was interesting but not as big as it seemed from the outside. In the evening we had had nabe (a pot on the table where you boil your own choice of vegetables and meat) together with Mari and Chie - yet another friend of Emma´s. It was delicious but since I have a neko-jita (cat´s tongue - meaning my tounge is sensitive to heat) It was a bit difficult to eat fast enough. 

The next day we went to a planetarium for the first time in my life (unless I went some time when I was too young to remember). It was beautiful but I could have been without the story about some ancient sailors or whatever. I was too tired to try to understand so I mostly just looked at the stars and relaxed. It reminded me of the beach in Kashima where we made fire. When I layed back on the rocks and watched the sky it was so clear and dark that I could see stars where it is usually black. And because it was on a beach there was nothing in the way of the stars. When I looked up my entire view was filled by the stars except in the edges where I could make out the island. Anyway, after we went back to Emma´s home I taught her some good Swedish words like "tåflörtas".

Day three was a slow cozy day and among other things we went to a small exhibition of woodcraft. There were traditional masks and figures and other things and they were really beautifully made. In the evening we went with Emma´s parents to a restaurant where we had yakiniku and I had some problems eating a hotate (scallop, pilgrimsmussla), but the other food was delicious. Then we went to karaoke together. Both Emma´s parents and Emma are really good singers. I was amazed. They of course didn´t think so themselves but I was in awe. Also, Emma´s father honoured me by singing a song about Sapporo that he had talked about earlier "... ai no matchi - Sapporo" ("... the city of love - Sapporo". I want to learn it so I can sing it to my Sapporo friends. All in all it was a great day as usual.

The next day Emma and me left early for Oita prefcture where we were going to the old town Nitta where there are wooden buildings several hundred years old. On the way we stopped at a place where they had the largest collection of tanuki-statues I have ever seen. (Tanuki is a badger-like animal and the statues have huge testicles and is supposed to bring fortune and wealth if you have them in front of your shop.) There was also a little shop where I saw something that looked like Japanese versions of the Swedish dalahorse except they were pigs. A while later we arrived to Nitta and walked around for a bit in the old town. Since it was recently hina-matsuri you could come in and see dolls on display in the shops - real old ones that were so precious that you weren´t allowed to take photos of them. We also went into one of the oldest preserved houses which was a kind of mansion with small gardens and a huge hina-matsuri doll display bigger than any other I´ve seen before or after.  Of course no photos were allowed and I didn´t feel like paying a fortune for the postcards or telephone cards they sold at the exit. After that we looked in some small shops before we returned to the car and headed for the ryokan (Japanese-style hotel) where we would spend the night. On the way there we encountered a surrounding I have never seen in Japan before. Huge open fields and hills with dried yellow grass. It felt like Europe or something. After some trouble we finally found the ryokan and checked in. The room was great. It is much cozier than a regular hotel I think, wearing a yukata and all. That evening we had shabu-shabu - a meal where you boil thinly sliced meat in broth in a pot on the table. It is delicious.

The next morning we had a great breakfast and a nice onsen (hot spring) bath. We then checked out and headed for the volcano Aso. On the way there we discovered that they had begun burning the dry grass on the way up the mountains. At one place the flames were a little bit too intense and near the road so we really felt the heat inside the car just passing by. Before going to the volcano itself we stopped at some beautiful plains and walked a bit admireing the breathtaking view. When we went up to the actual craters on top of the volcano it was even more breathtaking and I had trouble finding the very best picures to take before the batteries in my camera were empty. According to a sign beside the largest crater (there were several) it is number one in the world. I guess they mean size. But who knows... They had shelters to which you could run for cover if the volcano suddenly erupted which was apparently a risk since it was so active. There were also different forms of sulphur and lava-rocks from the volcano which they sold. Then there was only the long way back to Emma´s home. When passing the dried grass surroundings which we first encountered when we came they were all burned. They must have worked quickly.

The next day was a slow video day and we rented The Ciderhouse Rules and Mirai Shonen Conan (Future Boy Conan - an early Hayao Miyazaki-series if you know of him). The Ciderhouse Rules was better than I had expected but not as good as the director Lasse Hallström´s earlier films like My Life As a Dog and What´s Eating Gilbert Grape. Mirai Shonen Conan was very funny. It was the first four episodes so I gotta see the rest when I get to Sapporo.

On Thursday the 22nd we went up to the Yamaguchi prefecture on Honshu to see the famous Akiyoshi cave and plateau.  First we went to the plateau which is a wide area of hills with rock formations among the high grass. It is a very special sight and makes me feel more like I am in northern Britain than in Japan. After admireing the view while eating some lunch (and trying not to be bothered by a big hungry dog who came up to us and wanted food) we went down to the cave which is also very special. For one thing it is estimated to be 10 kilometers long and is at most 100 meters wide. And a stream flows through the entire main cave. And the illumination is cozy and effectful. The air inside the cave was cool so I guess it must be great to walk there in summer. In the evening we were supposed to go and eat okonomiyaki (a japanese dish which is similar to omelette - the word okonomiyaki means something like fry what you like) with some friends of hers but we became late so we went alone. It was a real cozy little restaurant with just four tables. At an okonomiyaki restaurant the tables have a teppan - an iron plate in the middle where you fry your okonimiyaki yourself. It gets hot from the teppan so I wouldn´t recommend it on the hotter summer days... (Me and my friend Nicke did that mistake two years ago in Tokyo. Luckily we had brought fans so we sat and waved at our faces thoughout the meal.) 

Anyway, it was a great last day of a great week. I´m only sad I had to leave as soon as I did. But Emma followed me to the train and I got a bentou box again so I had something to pick me up on the train ride. And of course I look forward to see Tsuyoshi in Osaka.