Monday, February 17, 2014

Weekend off to see doll festival and pick strawberries


My last class finished last monday. In the last japanese class, teachers brought some japanese traditional toys and we had chance to play japanese games. After that, one of our teachers taught us japanese tea ceremony so we got to know what japanese do in a tea ceremony. 

Last wednesday WJC students and i went to hakata doll shop to paint dolls, which was our last field trip in this semester. The dolls looked so pretty and the painting was very nice. I chose to paint a horse because 2014, for us, is year of the horse. Compared with the ones displayed in the shop, mine looked very ugly, but I did my best though. After the painting, Stephy and I went to Canal City as we wanted to buy some stuff. It was the first time in my life I'd bought myself a skirt, which sounds weird for a girl, I know. 

Stephy with her kawaii doll

Giang, Stephy and other students at the doll shop

Me and my horse doll. sorry for the stubborn hair :D
It is very boring if you just spend your time staying in your room and looking at the stupid laptop screen. I felt the same until Giang asked me to go out with her on Sunday. I didn't have any plan for the weekend and really wanted to go somewhere so I said yes right away. We headed to the doll festival Sagemon Meguri in Yanagawa with another vietnamese student and a japanese man, whom we call Saido - san. I was blown away by the dolls' beauty. They are all handmade stuff, looking so adorable, sophisticated and very japanese. Giang and I bought some of them as souvenirs at a shop nearby the exhibition house before we were off to have lunch. (I would love to buy all of them as they are so cute, extremely amazing but didn't have enough money :D)

At the doll festival

At the house built in Meiji period

A part of the house taken in paronama

Me with a shrimp doll

doll background

dolls - lots of dolls
Yanagawa Mari, bringers of good luck, indispensable to Doll Festival



Tachibana Garden, national site of science beauty
the garden taken in paronama
oh oh selfieeeeee
Me again, but not selfie, Giang took it :P

The kawaii doll couple I bought myself and my bestie.

Then we went to pick strawberries at a strawberry garden. With 1300 yen you can eat unlimited strawberries in 40 mins, which is a kind of buffet. It's the first time I've seen such big strawberries. So impressed and stoked. Eating there is not enough for me, so I bought some home which cost me 1000 yen. It's worth it as I could make some meals with those strawberries actually.

Lovely strawberries
strawberry garden

it's picking time, but more importantly selfie time with what i picked :D
Selfie again with Giang and the strawberries
Selfie No.3
The trip didn't end here. We went to onsen place after the strawberry thing. I'm not really keen on onsen or hot spring actually as my skin got itchy after I did onsen last year. I had a bit hesitation at the beginning but after Saido - san said that was a natural onsen, I felt a bit better. And the onsen turned out to be extremely great and relaxing, and especially my skin didn't get itchy after that, which might be the best :D. There are no photos for the onsen of course as we bathed naked :P! A wicked weekend!

I really want to go to some places near Fukuoka or in Fukuoka but whenever I say that to my host family, she always asks me whether or not the school takes us there. I don't want to appear over demanding but it is weird for me because she is the one asking me where I wanna go and she is my host family, but she refused to take me to every place I told her. In Vietnam, the host families willingly take you to the places you want to see, I'm sure. I felt disappointed. My host family is good actually, and she has reasons to do that but still very weird for me. I was asking myself if I should hope my next semester's host family can spend more time going out and taking me to places I wanna see. I don't know because I have hoped a lot, then disappointed a lot. However, fortunately, there are some people like Saido - san who is interested in helping international students. Thanks to him, I had chance to go to the place I want to go, to see things I want to see, do the stuff I want to do and get to understand more about japanese. Thanks Giang for inviting me to go out as well. If she hadn't invited me, I would have felt boring to death!

Enjoying strawberry, even had them as my dinner yesterday
My ISP paper was handed in this morning, so I feel very relieved now. Cooked this meal as a reward for me after getting all the hard works done as well as having lived on only fruits and vegetable (no meats at all) for several days (still don't know why I can survive).

Poached salmon with pepper, spring onions, soy sauce and a bit white wine
Lunch meal with salmon and veg and rice




2 comments:

  1. Anonymous18/2/14

    So happy for your experience! Great pics. Better said delicious pics :D - Ly

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    1. Thank you for reading and your comment. I really appreciate :x

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