Island Trip

In the morning I attended three hours of Aikido. I left earlier than usual, on my own, since Flick has gone off on holiday with her mother. At the end of the usual two sessions, I practiced a couple more moves for a while. We have a demonstration on Tuesday, so I was trying to make sure that I do not make a fool of myself, and, more importantly, that I do not let everyone else down. Though, it is not like they will care that much. Most of them are only 5 years old.

When I got back, I tried to flannel off a small, rust-coloured stain from the front of my dogi, but after a while I realised that I had simply succeeded in dieing it pink from the red dye in the flannel. I through the whole lot in the wash, which seems to have done the trick.

In the afternoon, Drummond, James, and I went on a road trip to a local island with Drummond's friends: Mina, Sawako, Shin, and Shingo, someone new that we met today. We took two cars, and drove for an hour to Shikanoshima (志賀島). We drove around the island's edge and stopped off at a beach. It has been a while since I have seen a proper one of these. We all played chicken with the waves, including trying to jump on a rock, but all of us eventually had wet feet.

We then drove to an observation tower, where we could see the whole island, including a myriad trees, as well as Fukuoka Tower and the rest of the city. It was all very beautiful. On the way back we stopped at supposedly famous hot-dog stand that sells 金印ドグ (kin'in dogu - Golden Stamp Hot Dogs). These were made of squid and steak, so I avoided it. We had to wait 50 minutes for them to be made, due to the places popularity, so we went for a walk. The Japanese bought dried squid pieces, we they loved, and which I did not think were too bad.

We stopped off at Maru-chan, a yakitori restaurant, on the way back home, where we ate, drank, and chatted for a couple of hours, before coming back home. It was a really cool day out. Drum commented that "this is the way that Sundays should be spent."