Swimming with the sharks

Ena and I went swimming on Shikanoshima last week. It was our first time to go together this year. We road our bikes counter-clockwise around the island to get to the beach on the northern tip, passing some nice scenery on the way:
We had picked up some cheap inflatable beach toys earlier and were happy to finally be able to give them a field test:
The ball works perfectly:
The nozzle on the big green ring had an unfortunate habit of constantly opening, meaning my lungs had to constantly fill it back up again. Nonetheless for 300 yen it wasn't a bad purchase!

I've been a bit worried about swimming in these waters since there was a story on the news a couple weeks back about beaches in neighboring Nagasaki prefecture being closed due to the presence of hammerhead sharks. Further internet research turned up all sorts of stories of people in the waters around Kyushu getting attacked or even eaten whole by sharks, including great whites. But it was REALLY hot out and there were lots of other bathers so we just said "screw it".

Its kind of a long bike ride out there from our place, but on the way back we could enjoy the sun setting at our backs as we crossed the bridge from Uminonakamichi:

Beach picnic and our last day in the kaikan

Ena and I went for a picnic on the beach near our place the other day to watch the sunset. It was kind of nice, we had the beach all to ourselves.


Tomorrow we are moving into our new place. We are pretty excited but at the same time I'm going to miss the kaikan. Its been a good home to us for an exciting year and we have a ton of good memories of the place, many of them chronicled on this blog.

Today we were busy packing. I thought the place looked really chaotic from all the packing but then I realized it pretty much always looks like this. One of the two photos below I took today in the middle of packing, the other one I took a few weeks ago of just what the apartment normally looks like. They look pretty much the same.

Anniversary

It was our sixth anniversary on the weekend so Ena and I spent the day together. We cycled to Momochihama and spent a bit of time relaxing on the beach:


After that we went to Marinoa, which is a huge outlet mall in Western Fukuoka. For reasons that I completely fail to understand they felt compelled to build two ferris wheels at the place. One I can understand, but two? More importantly, why would anybody ever choose to go on the smaller one when you've got one twice as big right next to it?

Anyway, we did a lot of shopping and had a good time so that was a lot of fun. After all the shopping we had a nice dinner at a nearby restaurant:

The beach downtown

Ena and I cycled into town to see the seaside Momochi area with its nice beach:
Its a really great place, it took us about an hour of pedalling to get there (all part of the fun)!

The Fukuoka Dome is along the beach too. I'm not a fan of Domes and prefer outdoor baseball stadiums, but I have to admit this one has a great location. Ena found a lot of cute seashells for her collection right in front of it:
Fukuoka Tower is also on the beach:

The water wasn't too cold:

We also had some ice cream:
And we capped it off by walking out onto this concrete breakwater and posing for pictures:


All in all it was a very fun day.

At the beach

It was a warm and sunny day today, which resulted in two noteworthy things happening: North Korea was able to launch a ballistic missile over Japan and I finally got the chance to take Ena over to Shikanoshima. It is the latter of these earth shattering events which this post will deal with as I don't have any photos of the missile launch to share.

The water was warm enough to go swimming but we just settled for putting our feet in, given that neither of us brought bathing suits:
The sky was quite clear so we had a good view of the Fukuoka skyline and Nokonoshima.

Ena got to do some beachcombing and found some nice shells to add to her collection:

After spending a few hours on our bikes we returned home to dinner and some very cute cakes I got at the local bakery: