Catchin Up

Rewind to the end of October.

We made plans with Rie and her husband to go out for dinner. This night turned out to be very interesting, because Rie's husband doesn't speak English. Rie joked with me because I just had my first Japanese lesson with her, and she said that since I now know Japanese, conversation would be simple...yah right. Our first stop was a lovely little shrine hidden in one of the areas in Innoshima.


It's dedicated to some guy who played some game that was very popular in that area. He was the greatest player or something like that. I should have picked it up, so I could be the greatest player, and have a shrine made in my honor...that would rock.


So after the shrine, they took us to another island, Setoda, and we went to this little restaurant called Kitchen Boogie. I wish I would have brought our camera, because I would have taken pictures of this place. It was quaint, but filled with all sorts of interesting trinkets. For starters, it had 2 motorcycles right in front, and was filled with Nightmare Before Christmas memorabilia. Wicked! The dinner was amazing. We had this type of pizza that had a melted rice glaze, also we had chicken, rice, giant mushrooms, and salad. We finished off the meal with a couple of cheesecakes. The owner came out and started talking with Rie's husband, and that's when she told us that he speaks English. Great! So we had a little conversation with him. He was a great guy. He went to University in Indiana, where he became obsessed with motorcycles, and he majored in Paleontology..so he was a little far off from what he was schooled for. An end to a great night. Oh, and the language barrier between us and Rie's husband wasn't that bad. Rie would translate back and forth, but most of the time it didn't matter, he was laid back and just listened and drank, kinda like me.

Fast forward to the end of November.

We are half way through our last 30 days in Innoshima, and Narumi and Matt decide to have a Good-bye night for us. They invite a bunch of people including Rie and Suzuka, as well as Oki, Ark teacher, and his wife, Narumi's 2 daughters, and Keiko, a student of ours.

We didn't leave Innoshima until 830, and we drove almost all the way to Fukuyama. The first stop, an all you can eat buffet. SWEET. Apparently, as I just found out recently from our new friend, Josh (we'll get to that in another post), all buffets in Japan are called Baikingu (Viking). Maybe they think that the Vikings were the ones who invented the wonderful buffet style?

ba i ki n gu

We...*cough*..I..*cough*...filled our faces. This place was great, it had grills in the middle of some of the tables so you can cook your food right in front of you...handy.


A pic of the bunch taken by Narumi:
(left side) Keiko, Nagi-Narumi's daughter, Suzuka, Shiori-Narumi's daughter, and Oki
(right side) Us, of course, Rie, and Matt.
After an hour, and cleaning out the place, we head to our next venue of fun, a bowling ally. It's an arcade/bowling ally, so I'm in heaven. Time to get our shoes, which are in a dispenser, strange. OH, and the largest shoe size they have is 27.5 cm...which is like a size 10 or 11.

Let the games begin!! It was about this time that we realize that the staff member who put in all the names misspelled Karleen's name...or shortened it a wrong way....

...*snicker* Ok, first it's Me, then *snicker* it's....Cow...BWAAHAHAHA! I mean...that's not funny honey...*snicker*

So, as you also see from the picture, that I started off a little bit rocky. A lot rocky, if you ask me. I did get my groove back and I had the chance to beat everyone, but I choked on the last frame...figures.
We had a bunch of fun. Bowling was a wonderful idea. I kinda wished that we were able to have the other type of bowling that they offered....


Time to give our shoes back. (shout out to Gord with a foot pic)
We only played the one game, then headed out into the arcade. Shiori and Nagi played a drum game along the same lines as Dance Dance Revolution, but with Japanese style drums. I played Time Crisis 4, which I don't think is out in North America yet...but I could be TOTALLY off.

Overall, it was a wonder night, and a great way to say goodbye, even though we still had 2 weeks left there.

We had a great time in Innoshima, and we will never forget the people that we've met. Even though it hasn't been a month yet, we are really missing Rie, Suzuka, and Nozomi, big time.

As a going away present, Suzuka gave us 2 keychains.
His and hers, if you will. The Owl is Innoshima's animal for Luck and the kanji on the heart is for Happiness. We have them on our keys, so we have a constant reminder of the friends we made.

This was the first installment of backlog stories that we have yet to post. I still have a crap load of random pics and stories from Innoshima, and we have quite a few recent stories that need to be shared, including how we spent our New Years...