Our day started early once again. We headed towards the train station to take two trains (a local commuter train followed by a bullet train) to Hakata station: the heart of Fukuoka city. Despite the early arrival, we didn't have too much planned.
We first ventured to a Ohori park that was close to the ruins of Fukuoka Castle. It was a pleasant walk around the pond in the park, for there was a strong breeze that cooled us off from the blazing sun. We arrived at the castle ruins after an hour or so walking around the park. I was a little bit disappointed because I was expecting a bit more than half a wall standing. I was expecting to see half a castle or something, but there was just a platform overlooking the city.
After the castle ruins, we headed to Canal City. It's a gigantic shopping complex that consists of at least 200 stores, two hotels, a movie theatre and other forms of entertainment. Like Sunshine City in Tokyo, Canal City is a city within a city. We looked at a whole bunch of stores, ate ramen at the Ramen Stadium up on the fifth floor, and got the chance to hear a live performance from a Jpop idol (fumiki). After a lot of hours in Canal City, we headed back to Hakata station to look at a huge Daiso store and shop for gifts at Tokyu Hands.
After shopping and a dinner based on Okinawa cuisine (I got the Taco Rice), it was back to Saga to do laundry. Despite having three laundry and dryers available for use at our hotel, we had to wait for our turn since they were all being occupied. After half an hour or so, my brother and I were able to grab a laundry machine each (I grabbed the far right laundry machine out of the three there) and went back to our rooms to wait for the machines to do it's work. After half an hour, I went back down to load my stuff into the dryer located on top of the laundry machine I was using, but the person who was using the dryer last did not come to pick up his/her stuff. Also in the laundry room, there was a middle aged Japanese man. After the two of us stood in silence for a couple of minutes, he asked (or I assumed he asked since my Japanese is pretty bad) if the dryer on top of the laundry machine I used had my clothes. I said it wasn't and he started to say more things to me.
I was highly confused by what he was saying and said that I didn't speak Japanese (Nihongo wa hanasemasen). I thought he wanted to use my laundry machine, so I took out all of my damp clothes from the laundry machine and stuffed it into a small bag for the time being. The man started to speak to me more, but of course it was in vain. He became frustrated and kept pointing at the dryer on top of the laundry machine I used. He walked up to the phone located in the laundry room to call the front desk for a translator.
A person came from the front desk to translate what the middle aged man was saying. Essentially, the man wanted to use the dryer on top of the laundry machine I was using because he was waiting in the laundry room first. After understanding, and telling the front desk attendant that I understood, the front desk attendant went to grab a laundry bag to stuff the unclaimed dried clothes from the dryer, despite 30 minutes passed from the time I was waiting in the room with the middle aged man.
After doing so, an another middle aged man came in to grab his dried laundry from the middle dryer. The first middle aged man was having a conversation with the second middle aged man, and I understood enough of it to understand that he was talking about me (since he was calling me a westerner). The first middle aged man, that wanted to use the dryer on top of my machine looks at me, and told me to use it since the middle one is now free...
Ah, the difficulties of not being able to speak the language of the country you are in... I made a pledge to become conversational before I return back to Japan in 2015, but that's for an another day.
Overall though, a busy and productive day. Despite the minor conflict in the laundry room, I wasn't going to let that hamper me throughout the rest of my trip!
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