#41 Finally finding some Yuru Camp gachapon

Transcript

My little blue dot wasn't working on my phone, my little GPS blue dot on the map, and luckily I just rebooted it and it's fine now, but I was thinking I only have to get from Nama Oike Park in Fukuoka to Takeshita Station. But I wanted to take these little back streets that are a bit quieter, so I could do a little podcast. I was like, you know what, I've done this run two or three times now. I think I can do it. I bet I could do this. But luckily I restarted the phone and it works down. It's like, that's probably for the best. Because me and the back streets are so tough. So when last I left this podcast, I was coming down from Abrea, I'm a mountain from this amazing observation level that I found that's like above the main observation deck that you can drive to, this one you have to hike up to, and it's like, holy crap, that's a good view. And then I went down this really steep path. I was like, oh, this probably brought me about halfway down, right? And I hit this like forestry access road. But no, it was not even, it was like five-six of the way up. I had a long ways to go to get down. But it's really nice, really nice winding, slow road. And they're doing a bunch of work on stuff, like building up stuff. And there's a lot of views on the way down that are like, man, that's good. And it looks like they're making them into more proper sort of park type areas. And it's like, wow, these are going to be, these are going to be good. And then about halfway down, it was getting real dark. Not quite, you know, like still technically kind of daylight, but really getting close. And I passed two guys who were going up the mountain. It's like, hey, hey, how you doing? Gave our halos, but I was like, what the hell? Where could they possibly be going? There's nothing there. And maybe it was just that they were trying to get up to the Aberyama Kitai observation deck because a lot of people go up there at night. That's where the drink machine and the hot dog guy are. And it's the beautiful night time view. But there was no way they were going to make it in time. So good luck to them. I wish I could have followed their little adventure, like what the heck happened to them. I mean, it's basically just a paved road all the way up. And then a very short, like maybe 200 meters, walk through the woods, although that part I bet was pretty, pretty freaky at night. But even just with cell phone flashlights, you know, I'm sure they were fine. But I mean, yeah, I bet it got wicked dark. But yeah, and I still had a long ways to go. It was way further than I expected. And yeah, it was pretty much, pretty much pitch black by the time I got to the bottom. Like fuck, which is extremely similar to the time I took that road in 2019, except that was the middle of the summer. Same thing happened. I got down there in the dusky twilight, that was, you know, late at night on a hot summer. This was, you know, 530 or something 520 in the dark fall. And I kind of hurt my knee a bit. And I mean, the obvious culprit would be that I went all the way up the mountain. I just walked all the way up the side. That definitely contributed. But I was pretty deliberate in my pace as I went up the mountain. And I felt fine. Nothing hurt at all as I went up the mountain. So even though it seems a little counterintuitive, I think it was actually going down. Even though again, I went down kind of with a nice gentle slope. Well, I guess that first bit that I went down, it was the really steep part. But then even though it was like a gentle paved road all the way down, I really had to hoof it because it was getting so dark. And I think that's where I hurt my knee. Because going down is like deceptively hard on the body. You know, you got to strain your knees to pull yourself up steps, but you're constantly rattling your fucking skeleton as you go down. And it wasn't the worst, but I did definitely have some pain in my bad knee. And you know, I stopped to kind of stretch it and stuff. And then it felt okay. But I had to do that like three times on the way, on the way home. And that's where it was like goddamn, I really wish. I wish I had a faster way to get the heck out of here. Pretty much no choice, but to walk halfway across freaking Fuqua. Either that will learn how the buses work. It's like, well, if I've done that previously, maybe but I'm not going to try that now. I wonder if you can use that. I've never even looked into that. If you can use like the IC cards, like the swikik cards on the bus, or do you need the coins? I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, then it started raining a little too. So that was just, but again, that wasn't that bad. It was all just kind of like little warning 5:00 stuff, little stuff that was like, be mindful of this in the future. Like I don't always have an umbrella with me because this little bag I bought on a Yammer road is just a teeny bit too small to comfortably squeeze an umbrella into. But I got it today because it is a kind of cloudy, a little overcasty, but also nice could go either way. But that was my little warning. My two little warnings. Watch your knee, you old idiot, and keep an umbrella on you because it is, is it still November? Yeah, it's November 28th. Is that record this? So definitely the kind, you know, obviously no snow, no snow Fuqua. I wonder if it's ever snowing here. But yeah, I need to be prepared for rain. So the weather is pretty variable around here. It was like really clear skies yesterday when I first headed out. And yeah, by the end of the evening, it was drizzling a little bit. And even today, I guess. So that's the thing is, because my poor knee and also just the whole day, like it took so long to get off that mountain, and so long to walk back. This just kind of happens to me every day that I kind of bite off a little more than I maybe should go a little further in a day. Just by the time I get back, it's real late. Which again, hey man, you only get to visit Japan so often in life might as well soak it in. But I thought today, it's like, yeah, this would be a really good excuse. Like, you're trying to convince myself not to, not to go off on a mega adventure. Just have a smaller adventure. You know, don't don't go as far. Don't get all, don't get all wacky. But then weird wacky shit happens. And you know, it's worth it. You find cool observation decks and stuff.

But with the knee thing too, it's like, yeah, you know, just rest. Take a day off. And I never actually got around to doing laundry. The other day, and I just noticed today, like, oh shit, this is literally my last pair of socks and my last t-shirt. Again, I don't know why I brought so many pairs of underwear. I mean, I'm not going to get rid of them. It's not a bad thing to have. But I, for some reason, brought way more underwear than everything else. Strange, strange oversight. But even in my weird little dank Airbnb where the sun doesn't shine, you can still see enough of the glow out the window that when I woke up, I'm like, oh, it's so obviously beautiful out. It's so obviously sunny and amazing. Like, I can't. I can't stay home. I can't. It's insane to stay home. And again, it's going to be dark by 5.5.30 anyway. There ain't nothing wrong with going out for the afternoon and doing some stuff. It's just then I got to actually come back, you know, if I actually came back as it got dark, that's all the time in the world to do some laundry and stuff. I just need to not be on top of a mountain at that time.

So that's today's quest is yet another attempt, although this generally fails. Fails in a good way. I fail upward. But another quest, another attempt to have a shorter day to go on less of an epic journey. And yeah, even though it was really sunny and amazing when I first woke up, it's definitely 50-50 now. There's definitely some clouds and they're definitely a little dark because I can almost use that. Just a nice rainy day to force me to stay home. That wouldn't be the worst thing. But it has not happened yet. It has been miracle weather while I've been here. It's just been absolutely out of control how good the weather is. I mean, besides it getting like windy in Chiba, that's like the worst thing. And that wasn't bad.

That was kind of neat. But also, I just realized who's what I could do for a bit of an adventure. I thought maybe I would do because I haven't been to the center yet. I'm going to just start saying the center because I would call it downtown back in North America. But I heard somewhere that downtown in Japan refers to the old part of town. So maybe the new part with all the fancy stuff is uptown. Maybe it's neither though. I think if I just say central, that's pretty central Tokyo, central Fukuoka. Everyone knows what that means. It's apart with all the big, cool, pretty lit-up stuff where you're very unlikely to find a squat toilet. The center. So I haven't really been properly to the center. And it's not a part of town. I know that well. But there is Canal City is a very famous mall that water runs through it like a canal. I don't really know what's there. I don't remember when I was here in 2019. I saw an Evangelion light show that they did there. They played music from Evangelion and projected stuff 10:00 on the walls and did like a water show. And it was pretty fucking cool. And it was just a free thing happening at the mall. I don't expect anything like that to be going on. But it's a good excuse just to go down to the center. Just to go just to head to the center and see what's up. But I also just realized I could combine this with another experiment where I figured out that the JR line does connect directly to Hakata station. But there's this other train line I have not taken yet. Ohashi station is not that far from me. O-H-A-S-H-I station. And it seems like it doesn't connect. It seems like it goes in the vicinity of Tenjin station and stops. So that'll be a perfect experiment for today. It's still taking me basically where I want to go. Maybe even better actually. The walk from Hakata to Tenjin is a little bit of a walk. So let's give that a try. Let's try that out and see what happens. And let's see if this cannot spiral off into a thing that eats up the entire day.

Though even if it does again, whatever, whatever. I'm also starting to realize I mean I've still got two months left in Japan. I'm not even halfway through my visit. 90 days is a nice chunk, man. That's a good visit. But I don't have anything set up after this. And I mean obviously it's better to set up travel stuff in advance. I just didn't really decide. I mean it was basically just very small chance I could go to Australia because I know someone there. Or more likely just go to South Korea because it's very close. I've never been. And since I'm illiterate in both countries, to me, it might just seem very similar. If all I do is walk around and go to convenience stores, I have a feeling soul might not be so different. But I know like actual nothing. I don't know how long visitor visas are for. I don't know shit. So I have to do a little bit of research. And I guess I should get on that. It's probably about time that I start trying to figure out what I'm doing.

And I'm walking past the school. It's always weird to see schools in Japan because that's such a common trope in in anime. And it's one of the things that is least similar. Like they look the same, they're the same shape. They have that same jingle. But the vibrant whackiness of shit going on in an anime is just not even remotely like anything I've ever seen with like kids in Japan. They're just like, yep, just going to school. Okay. If anything too, it's like schools. They seem to rely a lot on natural lighting. So they also kind of seem a little dim inside. Like it's not even especially bright. Because there's a lot of times when I'll be walking in like the countryside or even just walking through a mall or walking through a big vibrant center of the city area or even just a convenience store and think like, wow, it's just like an anime. And to be fair, I've never been inside a school of course. But I've never walked by a school in Japan and thought, wow, it's just like all those school anime. It doesn't feel the same. But I guess it would be weird if it did, right? It would be obviously it's a place of study. It's a place of seriousness. It's not a place for project a coat of fucking smash someone through a wall. What am I exactly yammering about? I don't know. I just happen to walk past a school. I got to figure out how to actually get to this station because yeah, I think I'm am I getting closer? I don't know. I legitimately might have just walked in a circle. But that's fine. It was a nice little walk, but yeah, now I've got to actually figure out what direction I'm supposed to go.

Speaking of umbrellas, got a little teeny bit of rain coming down, but it's also kind of nice out. It's like a little sun shower. But yeah, no question. Need my umbrella. I also got tucked away in my little bag. It's like a teeny little disposable plastic raincoat thing.

If somebody gave me in Canada, just a little 7-Eleven one. It's going to be kind of a break-in-case of emergency thing, but it's nice that I got it just in case, because I mean it was obviously different when I was here in 2019, because it was early summer. But yeah, I had at least one day. I'm sure it must have happened more than once, but I have one day I remember in specific where, 15:00 yeah, I was way in the middle of nowhere, and it just started raining like crazy. And I tried to wait it out, but it was not stopping. So I basically had to tuck my wallet and my phone under as many layers as possible. Just keep those dry and let everything else go. And yeah, by the time I got back to my Airbnb, it was like I'd just been swimming in a lake, but it was fun. It's not a bad day. I also realized you can kind of, you can kind of gauge when you're getting near a train station just by the neighborhood, at least in with the density of Fukuoka. Maybe the swimming work is well in Tokyo, but it might. Where I was just walking along, and you know, it's just normal sort of places, some stores here, and there's some convenience stores, nothing much going on. And then all of a sudden, there's a Pachinko place, there's a big book off store, there's all this stuff, and it's like, here we go. Oh, hashi stations right there. Nice. More obvious observations, since that is my specialty. I hopped in this book off, and it's one of these things I hadn't realized I'd never done until doing it just now, is I've always seen the Japanese Panmikam, because it's so different from the North American version. Pretty much every other console is more or less the same in the different countries. You know, there's a little difference is either it's a Sega, either it's a Genesis or a Mega Drive, or the buttons are a different color, little things, but the Famicom is massively different looking. And I've seen them a lot here. They're all wrapped up though, they're always like ready to go, like they're in very meticulous good shape, and you feel confident that if you bought it, it would work, and it would be all good. But this book off was the first time I've seen one that was open, is it was like $18 for this Panmikam. This was the opposite. This was like, who knows, take your chances. It's probably okay, but it ain't going to be pristine, so why bother? Why bother wrapping it all up? Here it is.

So I got to actually pick up the controller, and hold it in my hands, and fiddle with the little buttons and the switches on the thing, and just starts like, oh yes, who's got any jacked button.

I guess the Super Nintendo also had an eject button, but the, you know, obviously the American Nintendo, it was like this weird VCR system where you put the game in, and it pushed down a platter. It was a very strange design, because they were trying to distance themselves from video games, and to make it seem more like a VCR or something. And yeah, that was just neat, you know, just to neat little things. It's like, oh look at that. I just never realized I'd never really touched one of these things before. And then, you know, the step back from that, when I was here in 2019, I've never touched a Sega Saturn, but I'd never even seen a Sega Saturn. I was a Sega kid. I had a master system. I had a Genesis. I had fucking my brother at a Dreamcast. We had all the stuff except the Saturn. That's how much of a failure the poor old Saturn was. So I'd never even seen one until I came to Japan, and I got to just see a Sega Saturn. It's like, ah, nice. Completed that part of the mission. And then the other thing I noticed is I was walking along the the train tracks. This is like an elevated train. There was a little building under the tracks that was a music rehearsal and recording space. And I was like, that's weird. I mean, it seems like a really good place to have a rehearsal space, because it's just underneath the train tracks anyway, right? It's already very noisy. It's not going to matter too much to the neighborhood. I don't think if you're in there rocking the fuck out. But as far as recording goes, I wonder how that works. Surely that's got to be tricky, because no matter how soundproof the place is, you're underneath the train tracks, right? Like, I mean, again, during rehearsal, I'm imagining that could be cool. That could be like a scene in a in a music manga. Like, maybe you get inspired the train going by and just feeling the rumble as you're practicing your songs. Maybe it would like inspire you to find that new sound. There's something. But for recording, I got to assume that during the time zone, the train goes by, they just, okay, don't use that, you know, sorry, we've got to redo that part. Like, I just can't imagine how that could work. So that was an interesting thing. I don't quite know how that all works. And it seemed half genius and half like no fucking way. You can't. That what? Maybe you could record at night too, I guess. Like, once the train stopped. Anyway, kind of neat though. I never saw that before. I don't know if that's a common thing or what. All right, I'm going to hop on the train at Ohashi Station. Jesus, this is like a serious station. This is like a way bigger station than the JR Linus on the other day. 20:00 Let's try taking this and see where it goes.

All right, that was pretty cool. That was an extremely nice train. I'd say that's a, a little fanciness step up from the JR train I was on the other day. Which I guess JR is just a pan rail, right? So I guess that makes sense if they're just kind of like the, you know, we just let's get some trains run in. Let's just make sure things work. It's not going to be super duper fancy pants. As soon as I went in, like I was saying, it was a bigger station than I expected and it had like a clock, you know, right away you're getting them Harry Potter vibes that's like a real train station. It's sort of neat to be in on a train and just seeing the blue dot on the phone actually move, you know. On foot, you can see it move, but you really got to look carefully. You've really got to be watching to watch it little like the little thing scooch forward to make sure you're going the right way. Speaking of, just stepped outside. I just got to make sure I'm walking toward Canal City. All right, I think close enough. I think I'll get there this way.

But yeah, then I rode the train and off at the other side. Also, great big like train terminal feeling. Not quite like Grand Central Station, but you know that type of thing. Except with the vibe of Japan where there was curved LCD screens on the pillars in the room. So it's like an ad for some anime, but curved around the pillar. And I was like, fuck yeah, that's fucking cool. And then after I left that station, it's like right into a diamond store. It's like dude, after like just hanging out in the mountains and all the squat toilets and stuff, this is the other side of Fukuoka. Man, you get to the center and it is fucking bang bang boom. It's the future. But also because this place had the train station vibe similar to an airport vibe, it had my precious thing that I love so much. Those machines where, you know, you can basically invent your own drink, you know, where it makes the drink and it spits it out in a little paper cup. I fucking love those. Even though I associate them with kind of sucking a bit, like to me, that sort of feels like old school stuff that you used to see in North America. But you don't really see anymore and you don't really see in Japan either. You just see the normal vending machines with the cans. So they had the same one from the airport, from the Fukuoka airport, but they had a new one too. So I tried that and I was like, you know what, I'm not going to sit here and try to fucking use my little translator. Let's just try to do this. Let's just see if I can figure it out on my own. And I did not. I knew right away something was wrong because it had all those cool buttons. Again, these are like, I'm saying it reminds me of North America, but North America would never have all these options where you could choose the intensity of the coffee and the amount of sugar and the amount of cream, all this cool crap, hot or cold. But it didn't give me any of those options. Well, it gave me two options, which I guess were the hotter the cold and I guess wrong and it didn't give me the other options. Basically, I was trying to get hot coffee and instead I got cold chocolate milk with ice and I was like, geez, that's really not even close. But then I just went to one of the other machines and I got a little hot can of black coffee and mixed it all together and that was pretty good. Doing freaking alchemy here in the train station, but I pulled it off. In the end, I made the thing I wanted to make.

And yeah, basically, I guess I'm walking toward Tianjin Minami. Technically, I got off it. Nishitetsu Fukuoka in parentheses, Tianjin.

Next door to Tianjin Minami. And yeah, I'm in a head toward canal city just because I remember it and it's kind of cool and I figure I should get somewhere with a washroom because on top of the double coffee that I didn't intend to get, then as I left this station, there was a Tully's drink machine, just like vending machine. I've seen Tully's stuff before but I don't think I've ever seen a full Tully's machine and it had much a shot, which I've never seen before. 265 ml, it's one of the little metal cans that looks like a bottle, much a shot. And it seems like it's probably pretty goddamn delicious, but this is an absurd amount of liquids. So I'm walking past Fukuoka station. But what is Fukuoka station? Is it a bus station? There are some buses coming out because it's not the subway station and it's not the station I just 25:00 came from. Oh, there's a truck going by that also has some handsome J-Pop gentleman on the side in LCD form. Nothing like an LCD fucking advertisement, man. It looks so cool. Yeah, I don't know what the heck Fukuoka station is because it's not on my little pre-downloaded Google map. I don't know that it is a station. I think maybe it's just a mall complex called Fukuoka station. Like maybe all these local stations are tied together by the stores. I don't know, Fukuoka is a bit of a complicated place. It's a little confusing. Anyway, that train station was delightful if for nothing else than just because it had a cool vibe and it's got drink machines. I mean, what else do I need? But I also got the feeling too because it was only four stops I think to get here. It was like $2.220, I think, $2.20 in. Very cheap ride to get down here.

And I had the same thought I had on the JR train. It's like, okay, yeah, I got this nice little journey into the center. But if you look at the overall map or whatever, there's a million stops. So like, what would happen if I just went the other way? Surely I'll get around to this experiment at some point while I'm here. It keeps slipping my mind though until I'm on a train. And again, I need to, as with everything, the only downside to traveling in the in the late fall is that it gets dark so early. Other than that, everything has been delightful. The weather is perfect. But even for silly adventures like that, it just really does require getting your shit together and getting in gear relatively early. Because you know, if I hop on the train and I just spend like $15 going out to the middle of nowhere for no reason, that's one thing. But I don't want to get there in the dark. You know, I still want to have some daytime, do at least wander around and wonder what I'm doing with my life. Like even now, geez, like yeah, I felt like this was a pretty, pretty minor adventure today, but it's already quarter to three.

I got a couple hours, but the sun ain't gonna last. But again, this is the perfect, this is the one thing you can do in Fukuoka where it doesn't fucking matter if it gets dark. Because downtown, if anything, it might be better when it's dark. It might look cooler.

You know, I'm starting to get the distinct impression that the exact same thing that happens every single day that I'm in Japan is probably going to happen again because it took me a second to get myself situated. It's like, okay, which way is Canal City? Where am I going? And then I was heading in the right direction and it's like, okay, I'm starting to recognize stuff and then I got to the titular canal and it's like, ah, there it is coming into view, Canal City. But it's not nighttime, you know? It's like, ah, yeah, there it is. It's not bad. It's kind of nice. It's got like greenery that kind of grows up along the side of it, a bit unusual for a mall. But this whole area, I'm just looking at all this stuff around here and it's like, oh, this is going to be way better in two or three hours, you know? I think Fukuoka really is meant kind of to be seen at nighttime, this central area. So in this case, it's a good thing that the sun is going to go down soon. It's not like I got away to round until eight or nine at night.

But this will happen in no time. But yeah, I think, ah, now that I'm down here, I mean, it would just be weird to hang out here and then leave as it started getting dark. I got a fucking stay here till it gets dark and that's like, now that I'm here, I'm realizing that's the point of coming here. So my big plan to get home relatively early is, ah, it's probably not going to happen. I'm going to have to figure something out though because yeah, this legitimately is my last new pair of socks and my last fucking t-shirt. I mean, I have a washing machine in my little apartment. I haven't used it yet, but I don't foresee any huge problems there. It's really just the drier thing. Got to drag my clothes down the street to the to the laundromat to use the dryer or try to hang stuff up and see if I can dry the old-fashioned way. But whatever, again, not actually a problem, not a big deal. I just haven't done it yet. Every time I get home, I'm so fucking beat. I'm just so exhausted. I'm like, I don't care. I'll figure it out tomorrow. And then when tomorrow comes, I wake up and it's like, well, I could do stuff. But man, thank you how much sunlight I'd be eating 30:00 up if I do laundry. The hell with that. See, it's just, ah, I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm burning the candle at both ends or anything. It's not like crazy. It's just not quite working out. Things are just not quite working where I have any time back at the old Airbnb.

But yeah, I don't know. I've got to do it now. I've got to do it tonight or tomorrow just, I just got to. Don't have a choice anymore. On the last option number one, I just be a gross guy who wears this clothes two days in a row, which I'm not going to lie to you. Back in COVID times, I did do that sometimes because it's just like fucking. I'm literally just going to go walk through the wood lot near my house. I'm not going to see anybody like anyone. Once a week, I would like walk across town to go visit family. Other than that, I was really, really not spending time with people during COVID. So I got, I let myself get a little gross. It was fine. But I don't want to do that here. I do not want to be the guy walking around Japan who is the gross-smelling foreigner. I won't do it. I don't have a lot of national pride necessarily. I'm very casually like, oh yeah, I'm a little glad that I'm Canadian. It seems better than some of the alternatives, but you know, I'm not like rah-rah. I'm this fucking thing or whatever. But I don't want to fucking make Canadians and by extension, even just skinny, nerdy white guys visiting Japan. I don't want us to have a reputation as smelly guys. So I can't do that. I shan't. The other option is I could go to a convenience store and buy a t-shirt and a pair of socks. And that would extend me for a day, because I still got underwear at home. My pants are fine. But what a, what a weird thing that would be if I start falling into that habit. Ah, get one more day. One more day. One more day. Next thing you know, I've just got like a stack of overpriced random single item clothes, single pieces of clothing that I bought. And then once it does become time to travel on, all of a sudden it'll be like, ah, come mysteriously. None of my shit fits in my fucking book bag anymore. I think, I think these are all very stupid plans for a guy who like, I mean, it's so weird how nobody ever has time ever. No matter what. You know, like obviously if you got kids and you got a relationship, you got a handle, you got a job, you got to go to. Yeah, of course you have no free time. You know, time is precious. Time is a commodity. How is it that I am like, yeah, cool. I got money from my poor deceased. I got money from my poor deceased dad. I'm gonna make him proud question mark. I'm gonna use it to go on a 90 day visit to Japan where I don't have anything to do but literally just walk around and soak it in and hope that up in heaven he's not too ashamed of me.

And still I feel like all my days. And still I feel like all my days are so slammed. I just have no time. Now, I mean, to be fair, I climbed up a mountain yesterday that might help explain things a little bit but it's still pretty remarkable. There's no such thing as the languid day where just like, wow, this day will never end. When you're a little kid, that shit used to happen. Once you're an adult, that doesn't exist anymore. I don't know, I just like, again, I'm not complaining. I know I've got it very good right now in life. But this is like one of these things. Maybe I shouldn't even say it. Maybe it's just extra demoralizing to hear. But you know, if you're like, oh, jeez, if only I didn't have all these responsibilities. I finally have time to do the things that I always wanted to do. But the truth is shit, dude. Here I am. I'm doing it. I got nothing else to do. And if I actually sit down and write a fucking paragraph or writing for the day, it's like, woof, I did it. How was that hard to squeeze in? How did that happen?

I suppose standing here, recording podcast is not helping the situation.

It's quite miraculous. The timey whyminess of time, the relativity of time, which I mean, I guess it makes sense, right? Like how recessed when you were a kid, like a 15 minute recess felt like it was like an hour long or an hour and a half. It felt crazy long. But relative to the length of your life up to that point, it was. It was a good chunk of time. It's like a summer was like a serious chunk of your life. And this, you know, the chunks just keep getting tinier. The gradations get smaller and smaller as you get older and older. And then you die. Okay, let's just stop talking about 35:00 this now. Canal City is actually a pretty cool mall. It's really, really pretty. Though it is very half and half as far as indoor and outdoor, it's really a mix of both, which was really nice when I was here in the summer. Today, though, it's actually continued to get kind of windy and a little chilly. This would actually be a great day to have gone hiking.

You know, cool, you off a little as you're going up a hill. And the trees would block the wind a bit. It's not the best day to be downtown. Sorry, center town in the center.

Because yeah, I'd say that place is pretty good. I mean, it's got everything, everything you want. It's got the big gacha store with the toys and stuff that I thought was interesting, but it's also got fancy clothes if you're into that. As you go up, there's restaurants and stuff. I went to a tempura place with Brad once. That was very nice. I saw also on the fourth floor. They had one of those sushi places with a little conveyor belt, which is cool. I've never gone to one that's just like where the sushi goes around on the conveyor belt. But I have been to one where you order stuff and it arrives on a little like a little train comes by on a track. But I think Brad said that place closed sadly. But I was saying too how I saw like an Evangelion water show when I was there. And I was like, ah, surely that won't happen today. But then as I was walking around, the mall music got mysteriously much louder. I was like, what is going on with this? And then I peered over the edge and it's like, oh, it's not as fancy with like screens projecting things and whatnot. But they played some classical music and they had a whole water show. So I guess that just happens throughout the day. So that's a bonus.

The place is quite tall too. Once you get up to the fourth floor and you can look down into where like the little water show thing is at the canal. It was more than enough to trigger my fear of heights.

I was like, ooh, spooky. Apparently there are like a lot of Christmas lights. And like I saw that it was like some kind of like Christmas temporary Christmas city or whatever that was being set up. Like it's not there yet. Because it's not even December. But I will be here for another couple of weeks. So surely I'll be able to catch some of this Christmas vibe. So perhaps that's what I will do in the future. Instead of with every other plan I have for Fukuoka. It's like, shit, I gotta get up early. Earlier the better, gotta get moving while it's still daytime. This is the one thing where if a day gets away from me, it's like, oh great.

Just head central. Head central, see the lights. But today for a little train test, just having a nice little wander in the city proper. Not too bad. I also wanted to mention since this is this is the kind of nonsense that occupies my brain. The way that I mixed my accidental chocolate milk with a black coffee and made a delightful little mocha at the train station. So I also got the matcha shot, the Tully's matcha shot from the machine. And it's very good. Tully's I always get matcha when I go to Tully's. And it's like, oh yeah, this is pretty decent quality. This is good, but it's unsweetened. And I was like, oh, you know, it's good, but it's rough. It's definitely a little bit, it's a little sharp. Because as I'm always yammering about, that's my constant problem in Japan is that I'm mama bear, you know. Oh, this one's too sweet. Oh, this one's too bitter. Ah, this one's just right. It's really hard to find the just right. But really mixing stuff. Personal alchemy. Man, it really does the trick. Shit, okay, which way do I walk? I have no fucking idea where to go from this intersection. Holy crap, against all odds. If I just keep walking straight, it appears I'll go right to high-catastation. I fucking did it, but it was definitely an accident.

Oh, there's a movie theater in Canal City also. You know, just in case. In case you need a movie theater for some reason. Probably not the best thing you could do with your time, but maybe, I don't know. I'm not here to judge. That's clearly patently false, but that's my official stance.

So anyway, I had this fucking morning shot Tully's matcha. This rare item that I've never seen in a machine before, but yeah, it was like, it was like, whoo, geez, it's just like, boom, matcha. But like, the first time I ever had matcha, I worked at this place called the lens in Vancouver. That it's basically just Starbucks. But in order to stand out from Starbucks, our thing was 40:00 that we're higher quality ingredients, but even more expensive. And it was a pain in the ass. Like, when Starbucks makes a mocha, they just use syrup. Chocolate syrup from a pump. And it's fine. No one has a problem with that. No one minds that. But blends was like, oh, that's not fancy enough. So we got to get, we have three types of chocolate, which I mean, that part is kind of neat. There was dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate, but we can't just have syrup from a pump. That would be too easy. Instead, we got these bags of fucking chocolate chips from Belgium. And for each and every mocha or hot chocolate, we had to melt down the chocolate chips every time. It's like, fuck, it's already quite an annoying process to pull a shot of espresso and to steam milk and to make sure all your fucking velvety foam perfectly sized bubbles on your goddamn fucking. It was brutal. It was ridiculous. But if you want to pay 650, and geez, that was 650 in like 2000 and fucking five. What are they charge now for one of those things? $13?

But anyway, that's the kind of nonsense we're dealing with. But then they brought in mocha. And it was really awesome because they legitimately brought in real-ass mocha. I'd never heard of mocha before, but like, they shipped it in from Japan. It came in a little package that it's like, I don't know, how big would I describe this thing? Bigger than your hand. But not that much bigger. Like, you could place this package in the palm of your hand and it would like overshoot your hand a little. And it was $200. I saw the invoices. They weren't kidding. They were all like, yeah, this is so pricey. It's $200. That's like, is it really? And then I saw the fucking invoice. I'm like, holy shit, it really is. So then it was like super powerful mega mocha. You just take like a teeny little scoop and put a little bit in every mocha latte. But anyway, long story short. That's when I started realizing I could fuck with shit. I was like, wow, you know, I can make like whatever the iced frappuccino type thing is. We didn't officially offer it with the dark chocolate chips, but I could do that because I fucking worked there. Or with the mocha, it's like, hey, I can just put a little bit of sweetness. And it's way better. That's not how we sell it, but that's how I can make it. Fucking delicious. So this is like the ghetto version of that where I had my fancy mocha. And then I just went to a family martinacross from Canal City. And I got a boss coffee, macho latte, super sweet trash drink. You know, it's just shit. It's just green sugar drink. But it has a vague taste of mocha. And when I mix the two together, so good. So good. So delicious. However, I still have most of it in my pocket. You know, it's like, I mix them of it together and drank it. The rest of it is like, all right, twist the cat back on this bottle, put it away because as I've chronicled many times, I'm a pea machine. I can't drink this much liquid. I'll die. I'll save this for later. That's the only problem with this mix and matching.