DearScotty

March 31, 2008 marks a special date in Fukuoka history. I was going to post our Okinawa trip report but that’ll have to wait as there are more important things to share. Today, Fukuoka welcomed a new American food chain to their downtown. Prior to this date, the only foreign fast food options around town were McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and KFC. But things are a changing! Now we have a Subway! Theresa and I decided to partake in the grand opening and made our way to the city this evening for some fresh yummy sandwiches. The only other times we’ve had Subway in Japan were when we visited Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo. Now, Fukuoka is almost like a real city!

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Over the course of my time in Japan I’ve managed to collect quite a few humorous text messages from some of my local acquaintances. I thought I’d share some of them here. I’ll keep the senders’ names anonymous in case any of it comes back to haunt me. This first one comes from a friend I made early on who was expecting to meet me at our town festival:

“I wait for pleasure”

Unfortunately, no pleasure arrived for her. So she responded, “you came?”

I replied that I was on my way and received this in response, “I came :-)”

The following day she sent me a follow up message, “You came, I was glad. I will wait for pleasure tomorrow. :-)”

Once school started we stopped chatting and I ran into her a few times at the grocery store. But last September I received this gem, “By the way, I have 1 news. I have a baby in my body now. It will be born in April of the next year :-)”

Over the past year and half I haven’t been able to get into Japanese pop music. Sure there are many avenues for me to find out about J-pop but I’d really like to steer clear of those dark alleys:

1.) I could talk to my students about who’s hot or not, but they’re just kids and would probably just recommend who’s ever doing the newest McDonald’s ads.
2.) There’s also the occasional Karaoke night out with all the local foreigners where undoubtedly there will be a few who rock at Japanese. Here they must show off their skills by singing some J-pop hits. Those songs usually sound exactly the same, and when drinking is involved, those songs will poof out of existence from my musical memory.
3.) I could always turn on the TV to catch a musical variety show but that would mean having to put up with bizarre commercials that either end unexpectedly or finish with a cheesy jingle that would even make Uncle Jesse cringe.

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