10 September 2011 Quick dinner, Japanese style

Yesterday, I made my first experiences on my own, without the usual bubble of 9 other foreigners. I took to train to Tenjin with Sara, where I met up with a friend of a friend, who has lived in Fukuoka for over two years now. He gave us a little tour of what seemed the “cool” end of town, Daimyo (I have no idea if this is how you spell it...). As I had my first meeting with a student at 3pm, I said good-bye to both of them at Tenjin station and made my lonely way to the IMS building. Which is across the road. So far, being on my own in Fukuoka wasn’t too difficult.

In the lobby of the IMS building, I met Mari. Her English is incredible, so I have no idea how I could possibly help her. We had a coffee together and talked about her time in Germany, where she had lived for 6 years (which is why I picked her as a student; it’s worth picking interesting students after all!). She showed me an outlet bookstore with amazing Japanese fashion magazine, cooking books and travel guides, as well as a great department store called Loft, full of fancy electronic gadgets, amazing lunchboxes, and other fun things.

Then, Mari took me to take a purikura. Purikura is the most fun, but also scariest Japanese cultural experience. It’s essentially a photo booth. The difference is that you don’t go there to take passport photos, but incredibly saccharine self portraits that whiten your skin, accentuate your eyes, add in a pink background with hearts and other girly things and jenglish slogans like “she is a fantastic dancer and she eats takeout on china”. Once you’ve taken a load of pictures, you can go to a machine and add even more hearts, bubbles and pictures of cute animals. All of this takes place in a room with incredibly loud music. There was not a single lonely boy in the room; the only two males I saw were with their girlfriends. The rest of the crowd, with an average age of 14, was dollying up in special dressing rooms or admiring their purikura pictures with bunnies, flowers, slogans...and some tiny white heads sticking out of the pink explosion.

I said good-bye to Mari, but I had another three others to waste until I was going to meet my next student. At first, I wandered around the expensive boutiques and the pet shop with live dogs and cats in glass cages, but both were fairly depressing. I decided it was time to eat, but didn’t quite know how to go about getting some food. I had seen one food shop, but I was told it is incredibly rude to eat whilst walking, and as there were no seats inside the shop or out front, I decided to find a little food stall in one of the department stores or train stations. When I got there, however, I realised that my complete lack of Japanese, and my ignorance of the cultural particularities of “eating out”, I was pretty much lost. I waited and watched a little while, and finally walked into a shop with particularly appetising wax models. The menu––surprise surprise––was in Japanese, but there were also pictures of the dishes. I pointed at my prospective dinner, smiled, and hoped for the best. Five minutes later, a steaming version of my desired food stood in front of me: deep fried prawns with miso, pickles, salad and––of course––rice. Thankfully, the meal came with the bill, so all I had to do was walk to the counter and pay up. I felt pretty damn good about myself.

I met my next student, Shiho, at the IMS tower at 9pm. We went to a Starbucks (they have macha Frappuchino’s here!!) in Tenjin station and had a little chat about her German lessons. This is going to be exciting, my first German student! As I said good-bye to Shiho and hopped onto the first train to Asakuragaido (I’d like to pretend I can read the massive board that tells you where to get which train, but I have to be honest: all trains go to Asakuragaido. All I can check on the board is the platform and time from which the first train is departing, and whether it is a slow, normal or fast train), I felt pretty good about my first day alone in the big city.