lots of fun

I was out til about 2:30 again last night (sunday night). ugh, but I had a really good time at the members party at the 'regal beagle'...

It was a lot different then the regular friday/saturday type events - no navy guys, (almost) no H gaijin, (almost) no H b-boy guys either for that matter. It was mostly just real party people (some of them pretty good dancers) out to have fun and be friendly, which is a good thing.

I took about 800 pictures, I'll have to put them online tonight or tomorrow.

in the meanwhile, here's some (random) pictures I took on Saturday with my phone cam:

Random shot while waiting for the train near my house, these guys were laying down new rail ties or something. its actually kind of scary how primative train tracks are... you'd like to think its more precise then just laying some concrete ties down on some gravel and using a big screw to hold the rail down... but its not... at least not for this auxillary track.

I met up with Michiko at Yodabashi, the biggest electronics store around. She was getting last minute stuff for her trip to Australia, including an iPod for a friend there and a hair dryer...

Unfortunately she didn't get the snoopy or the duck hair dryer... (how could you say no to that?!)

Meanwhile while she was shopping for hair dryers...

I was distracted by the AU cell phone promotion team... I mean the AU cell phones...

Actually I managed to tear myself away from their product demonstrations long enough to buy an iron and some hair clippers too.

After that Michiko and I headed over to the 100 Yen shop nearby, its one of the biggest in Fukuoka, lots of great stuff there, EVERYTHING is $1... including these fine additions to any house's glassware collection:

Unfortunatelly the 'expert' glass got cut off on the right there, i'll have to go back and take another picture, I don't know how to describe the position verbally. :-P

I am down to only two glasses in my house since Michiko accidently broke one of my other 100 yen glasses, but I decided not to replace it with one of these...

Instead I bought a full compliment of bicycle night safety gear -a new rear blinker, a headlight and a pair of reflectors to pimp out my bike:

(parked in front of the Adidas store). Actually the headlight and blinker aren't on in this pic, but you can check out the reflectors on the spokes. ;-)

I actually am kind of annoyed at my bike, despite the 6 gears, the small wheels make it hard to go very fast. If I didn't plan on getting a motorcycle sooner or later, I'd be trying to trade up to a 10 speed by now...

So just to let everyone know, Michiko left yesterday for what is known as a 'working holiday' in Australia... basically it is really easy for Japanese people to get a 1 year work visa in Australia, so what a lot of people do is they go for an extended trip there that may include some short term work (usually for Japanese tourism related industries). She is planning on spending at least a few months there, visiting friends, travelling and when her money starts running low, probably working.

Anyway, tons of pictures of last night's clubbing await...