Kashii Kaikan's Mos Burger Closed!

It is not often that I will admit to feeling bad about the closure of a fast food outlet, but I kind of do about this one.

There used to be a Mos Burger in the first floor of the above building. It is right next to the Kaikan where we lived for our first year in Fukuoka. We used to go there a lot for lunch or dinner, usually on our way to or back from a cycling trip in Eastern Fukuoka.

Mos Burger is by no means the best fast food franchise out there. But I liked this one. Across the street from the building is the Kashihama beach and Island City beyond that. The windows had a great view of this and it was a nice place to just sit.

Anyway, probably most people who have lived in the Kaikan remember this place as it was the closest source of fast food. I'm sorry to say it is no more!

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.

Birthday

Our friends from Thailand had a birthday party for their 5 year old son. He likes dinosaurs a lot so that is what we got him - and so did everyone else so they will be shipping a ton of dinosaur toys when they go back to Thailand in a couple of months. Hence the dinosaurs everywhere. Ena and Tai Ching lit the candles on the cake:
Our friend Oi giving the birthday boy a heartfelt lecture on the benefits of clean living (or something like that, I don't remember what she was saying):
Party goers revelling:
I'll definitely miss these parties at the Kaikan when everyone leaves in a couple of months.

Kittens on a moped, Ena's haircut, fixing a Famicom and other news

This was another nice week in which we didn't go anywhere particularly photogenic due to the rain but nonetheless took a few pictures.

My 1250 yen Famicom called it quits during the week. Determined not to let it die, I pulled it apart with my new tools:
This is what the insides look like:
Much to my delight I was able to get it up and working again. The problem: 26 years worth of accumulated dust.

On Thursday I came home and found that the kittens had made a new home on my Icelandic classmate Gunnar's moped:
I'm not sure if he's noticed this or not.

Ena got a haircut on Friday and looks even more beautiful than ever (if that was possible):
Friday night we had a party for our friend Oleg and Tijo's birthdays:
It was a lot of fun.

Kittens! And another bike trip!

One of the stray cats that lives around the kaikan had a litter of kittens the other day. This is one of them peering curiously out from behind a bush:
There are five of them total, all cute:
In other news, Ena and I went out to Ikinomatsubara on Sunday, where the Mongol invasion wall ruins are. It was quite a long bike ride. We stopped at a huge outlet mall along the way and Ena got me a nice shirt. The weather was great, really sunny:

Ena in front of the wall:
The two of us:

Some parties

Its been a while since I posted anything, things have been pretty hectic recently and there hasn't been a lot of things to put up.

We've had a few parties that were fun in the past couple weeks though.

Two weeks ago it was one of the Icelandic student's birthdays so we had a little part just behind our building in the kaikan:
Then last Sunday we planned to have a beach party, but unfortunately it was quite windy and a bit rainy so it didn't work out so well and we had to relocate to a slightly sheltered area near the beach. We had a good time socializing with everyone though:
Then on Wednesday our friends Augustine and Anna from the Philippines had a birthday party for our friend Tai Ching at their apartment. That was a lot of fun, loads of people came:
Augustine has a cool little soccer table:
And he's got one of those Dance-Dance Revolution type games:

Karaoke

Ena and I went out to karaoke with some of our kaikan friends last night. It was Wang Jin's birthday so we went to celebrate:
Ena and I belted out a few tunes together:
Me with Ren Hua and Don Don, who has a really good voice:
These folks sang quite a few:

Birthday Party

Two of my classmates, Wang Jin and Yu Jin (above), had birthdays falling on almost the same day so we held a birthday party for them yesterday. The party was at our friends Connie and Joel's place, which is just 2 floors above us. Amazingly we got close to 30 people into their apartment (which is just as small as ours). Mostly it was people from my program. Ena made some great meatballs and bought the birthday cakes at a local bakery. She and our friend Tai Ching spent most of the day shopping and preparing for the party while I was at school. We had a pretty good time.

My friend Lan from Thailand brought his 4 year old son Ishi to the party, he is a good kid. He is hitting me in the head with an ice cream bar in this photo:

These are some more party photos:

Oh no! Snow!

Much to my surprise we got a lot of snow yesterday, so much so that it was still on the ground the next day (though most of it melted today with some rain in the afternoon). On my way home from school I got caught in a pretty heavy snowfall (on my bike):

After Ena came home we went over to the shopping centre across the street and she made a snowball:
This was the view this morning from our window:
We saw my friend Augustine and his wife Anna from the Philippines making a snowman and joined them for a little while:

We tried making a little boulder of our own but I gave up half-way through because my gloves got soaked:

Christmas Party

Ena and I hosted the social event of the Kyudai Kaikan yesterday with our Christmas party (on Christmas eve). We were able to successfully cram 16 people into an apartment that measures approximately 3 metres by 6 metres. This is most of us (this picture may also be useful for historians trying to visualize what the Black Hole of Calcutta looked like):

Ena made some really good sukiyaki (a Japanese dish with radishes, beef and noodles) and all of our guests brought food and drinks as well so it was sort of pot-luck style. There was some really good food so we all got stuffed! This is Ena with my classmates Tai Ching and WangJin in the kitchen (Ena, I should point out, is the only one actually cooking!):

These are some more pictures of everyone crammed into our apartment and having a good time:

Malaysian/ Chinese dinner

Yesterday our friend Tai Ching invited us over to the single people's building for dinner. She made some Malaysian dishes and Tingting (from China) and Concetta (from the US) also made some dishes. It was a pretty good time. This is Ena with Tai Ching, Tingting and Yujing who are all in my program:

Everyone around the table enjoying the meal:

Ena and I with Concetta enjoying the meal:

I cleaned the table after we finished up:



After dinner Tingting made us some Chinese tea which was the bitterest stuff I have ever tasted. She also gave us this nice book of Chinese paper cut-outs which was really nice: