Well, Miho came to Fukuoka over the long weekend this past weekend and we had a really great time. I have never felt like a tourist in Fukuoka until this past weekend. I am not sure why there was a long weekend but perhaps it was kind of related to valentines. In Japan on valentines girls give chocolate to guys.This might sound one sided until you find out that later on March 14th - known as white day - guys are expected to give a much more expensive gift to the girls that gave them chocolate..
Anyways, I got lots of chocolate from Miho, so I am saving my Yen to buy her something nice hopefully around March 14th.

It was really interesting having her visit - she has never been to Kyuushuu (the southern island of Japan that Fukuoka is on) before and to spite being non-Japanese I was the one who was the guide around town, having lived in this city for the past 3 months I've gotten farmiliar with most of it, but we still managed to find new adventurous places to explore.

We spent a lot of time at the mall around Canal city where we played some type of metal-coin gambling machine which was dangerously addictive. The hightlight of that game was when we won the Jackpot and thus with only having spent 500 yen were able to keep playing for about 2 hours before our coins ran out.


Miho finally got to try Tonkotsu Ramen - the famous Ramen of the Hakata area, and she loved it I think (Miho loves Ramen in general). We also went to Karaoke with Hiroki (one of my friends from the dorm I live at) and had a blast belting out songs. Again we ate Yakiniku (pictured here) which is becoming one of my favorites though its a little on the expensive side.

One of the other cool places we went was Fukuoka Tower, which is built right next to the beach and thus was extremely windy and it was a little unnerving seeing the top of the tower shake, but in a city that gets plummeted by typhoons every year I think the tower is built to withstand much stronger wind.

Next to Fukuoka Tower is a TV station building, and inside there is a Robotics Center called RoboSquare which has a TON of amazing robots and gadgets - a geek's paradise! There is even a workshop where you can build some robots and write computer programs for them if you've got some coding talents (although I love to write apps in C and VB I didn't give it a go) There is also a demonstration/tour put on every few hours and some competitions held there sometimes where students from local universities showcase their latest research by competing automated bots against each other in rounds of soccer. There were even a bunch of robots for sale including the automatic vacuum bot that I so want to buy. Here are some pics we took:









Also check out this video we took of one of the robots there. This one basically can move around the house and play music, and you can call it to your room when you want music or it can act as an alarm that runs away or it can dance to the music. In this video its stuck on a platform so it basically just "dances" but it was cool none-the-less.


Anyways, I had a really really great time this weekend with Miho! I will be heading up to Tokyo in 2 weeks, so in my final stretch at GenkiJACS I am trying to hit the books and study hard! Mata ne!