I’m back in Seoul. I had to take two exams the morning after I arrived. I wasn’t at my best but I seemed to handle them quite well. I hope enough to advance to a higher level. Although if I advance to a higher level, I’ll have to do a bit of catching up. My memorisation of vocabulary is slacking a little recently. I’ve memorised words enough to look at them spelt but I struggle to hear them in spoken language. More worrying is I am slowing forgetting previously learned vocabulary. Mostly due to the fact that most of my friends have been trying to speak a lot in English recently. So my priority this term is memorisation of vocabulary. I plan to use words I often forget by using them in everyday life. If I use a word in applied conversation I seem to remember it more than writing it out over and over. Also to use korean before I blurt something out in English. Really my Korean is at the stage where it should all fall in place now. I just need to try my best to make that happen. Fighting!

The last couple days were difficult because of the weather. We had to stay home as outside a typhoon hit Japan. The wind was strong and the area received some serious damage as well as some fatalities. Today we managed to meet some friends of the friend I am staying with. They were really nice people and I had the opportunity to use some of the Japanese language I know. They understood me but I’m still a little shy using my Japanese.
We all ate lunch together in a organic pasta buffet restaurant. It was delicious, simply put. I enjoyed the food immensely. There was also a selection of pretty cakes to eat for desert. Really nice. Afterwards we all went to ChaChaTown (an outdoors shopping centre) to watch a live music performance. It was very folky but the female vocalist could hit all the notes so it was a nice listen if not quite to my taste. They all knew the singer so we spend some time chatting together.
Later on we went to meet another of her friends who happens to be a singer in a band called ringle. She prepared a CD to give to me and asked my help in finding her a show in Seoul. I’m not deep into the Seoul music scene but I at least know the live venues that could showcase her band. So I’ll pass the details onto her and help in any way I can. She was a smiley and kind person who tried her hardest to make English sentences. A fun meeting.
We rounded the day off by eating Ramen - Fukuoka’s famous food. It was the second time I’ve tried it and again it was absolutely delicious. The taste drives my taste buds crazy and I can easily finish off a bowl. Luckily in Korea we found a restaurant which is run by Japanese that offers the same food. It’s not quite as good but close enough.
Tomorrow I return to Korea, well as long as the weather is okay. We return by boat, you see. It’ll be nice to go back but at the same time my break will be over and it’s back to the books.

Today I was awoke by an almighty roar from the sky. It was quite possibly the loudest thunder I have ever heard. A little scary actually. Anyway, after a delicious bowl of udon for lunch, we headed to a natural history museum. It was a little difficult to find but ended up being well worth the effort. The architecture was incredible and the museum was well organised. I really enjoyed the dinosaur displays. Particularly impressive was the event room which was a recreation of one of the dinosaur period landscapes. The show started and the animal-tronics came to life with impressive sound and visual effects. Really nice.
Afterwards we went down to the riverside and took a glance at Fukuoka castle before doing a little shopping. I finally found some trainers that fitted me - a pair of pinstriped all-star converse. I also picked up two books - Music Graphics and Genki (a textbook for Japanese study).
We ended the day by eating Kushiage (see pic). It’s really similar to tempura and was incredibly delicious. Yep, I had another good day.

Today we woke up with the intention of going to a mountain populated with monkeys but unfortunately a typhoon will come to Japan. If we went to that mountain, we would probably need to stay over night as it is a little far from here and it’d be a shame not to explore the traditional areas nearby. However, the typhoon will start tomorrow so we changed our plan and went to a theme park called Space World. There were absolutely no queues for any of the rides because most people were either in work or school. The rides were fairly exciting but some had an extra charge on the steep entrance fee. We watched some entertaining shows that had a surprising amount of effort put into them. They were a lot of fun to watch actually. In the end we played bingo with the theme characters. After a few lines had been won, my line came up. I had to go up on stage but then also a little girl with a height a little above my knees came on stage as she had won too. So we had to have a tie-breaker game to claim the prize - a wonderful pink study aid haha. I let the little girl choose the tie-breaking card. She turned it over and lost. Yes, I beat her! Actually I wanted to give the prize to her but I was shuffled off the stage by some cute characters before I had a chance.
Afterwards we sampled some nice snacks including flavoured shaved ice and rounded up the day with a little shopping (I picked up a few books). It was a fun day overall.

I’m in Japan! Yes, I need to travel again for visa reasons. I’m staying at a friends house in Fukuoka. Her family have been very kind to me and are very nice people. They’ve been feeding me like I have a hole in my stomach but my friend said it’s just so they can figure out my taste, haha. Today we did a little shopping. I wanted to get a book but the store had sold out unfortunately. In the evening me and my friend hooked up with her family. We all went downtown and ate tempura. Tempura is fish and vegetables on sticks, that you cook in a boiling pot of water after coating them in batter. Simply put, it’s fried food. The restaurant had a buffet system that lasts for 90 minutes per table and we used the whole of that time, so you can imagine we ate a lot. It was really delicious though. Actually I want to go one more time before we head back to South Korea.