I have just had Whaea Janice on Skype taking a tour of my new room. There is very little to see as you can really only turn around but there are parts of the room that do have a definite Japanese feel to them. As you walk into the room there is a step where you stop to take off your shoes, it is very bad mannered to wear your shoes inside and even at school today we removed our shoes and put on slippers for class. (Then if you go to the loo you have to change into special toilet slippers... I did spend a bit of time obsessing about whose feet had been in there before mine!) The other very Japanese part of my room is the bed, I have a futon mattress, which is a little bit like a slab of concrete and a special pillow, only small, that is filled with beans, which is like another slab of concrete, I am sure it is all very good for my back!
The bathroom is very small, about 1.6m x 1.6m. In Japan they have small but very deep baths (well compared to NZ anyway) The idea is that you wash yourself before you get into the bath. Many Japanese people would be disgusted to know that NZ people just sit around in dirty bath water and then think they get out clean! They could be right!
So that is my little space in Fukuoka. I had another walk around the town and you can see some pictures. Check out all the bikes. I have almost been run over several times as people ride all over the place then leave their bikes at the train station. There is very little crime here and many people don't even lock up thei
r bikes... and they are still there when they get back!
Bikes outside the station
Department store window, selling kimono for the summer festival
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