Lost Calligraphy

I went with James into Tenjin where we met with Flick and Ciarán. We hunted round for a place to eat, but came across only 40 minute queues until we found a rather nice little ramen bar beside the restaurant that Seb took us to in our first week. It was very cosy, with realy wooden logs for seats, and the food was tasty and cheap to boot. Beats the £3 for a toasted cheese sandwich that we saw.

Afterwards I went with James to a free calligraphy class in the ACROS building. It was quite fun: we were writing New Year's cards, rather copying out the calligraphic hand off a a photocopied piece of paper. It's really hard to read Japanese calligraphy; I really don't see how they manage but every Japanese person can do it. It looks nothing like normal handwriting or computer print but is still perfectly legible to them! Lauma turned up half way through and we stayed and had green tea until the class finished.

I went a-wandering afterwards to find Hakata station, but became lost instead. I had to ask for directions, and obviously I had to walk back the way I'd just come. Very frustrating. I was looking for a ￥100 shop that I'd been told about, but I searched high and low but I couldn't find it. I was in quite a bad mood by now, which was helped by the fact I got lost twice more on the way back and had to again ask for directions. In total I spent 2.30 hours that I'd allocated to Christmas shopping doing nothing but walking around aimlessly. I gave up in the end, bought myself another CD and came home. Sorry everybody, you're not getting any presents this year!

I went downstairs in the evening and spent about an hour with the reception staff as they helped me to write a New Year's card to one of my teachers. We've all been allocated one to write to, and now I've finished mine. I can't send it until 16th though, by which time I'll be back in England. I'll have to get someone else to post it.