Fukuoka pt 1

Whoa! Where are we going? Whats going on?!!!

Hehehe. So as I mentioned, Anna and I went to Fukuoka for a couple of days during Silver Week. We left for Fukuoka on Monday, and came back on Wednesday, so we were there for 2 nights. Fukuoka is about 3 hours away. Hiroshima is about the same distance. I've been to Fukuoka once, for the baseball game that I blogged about a few weeks ago. But I hadn't really seen any of the city, so here was my chance!

Anna and I took a bus to Fukuoka. It was a few dollars cheaper, roundtrip, than taking the train. Expensive both ways, if you ask me. 5000 Yen for round trip bus...which is maybe 60 or so bucks.

Because it was Silver Week, we booked too late, and the first night we stayed, there weren't any rooms available! So Couchsurfing.com came to the rescue, and we stayed with this cool guy named Tim. Tim's apartment was filled with guitars. He is living in Fukuoka as an engineer, but music is his life and love. Which turned out great for Anna and I, because he invited us to a local music festival. Wasn't 'Fukuoka local' though. We picked up his friend Morita, and drove a couple hours down to the festival, which was local, for that local area. haha. But it was well worth the drive. It wasn't touristy at all. And it was also not awkward that a few white people showed up to this Japanese Japanese event. It was just music lovers converging, and listening to some great bands. Its nice being able to do things outside of what is offered for tourists. I live here man. I live here. No tourism. :) :)

So there were three bands, and make sure you click on the videos at the bottom of this post. Especially of Drakskip. Great great Celtic band with a smoking hot fiddle player!

These guys were like the rock group of the night. They were the energetic lady-killers who just had so much fun up there, and got the entire audience to have just as much fun. They were hopping around, changing up genres, and just really entertaining us!

This group was really cool. The only group out of the 3 to have a female in it. I loved her voice, it was very unusual and haunting. This group played traditional Okinawa music, which I had never heard before, so it was quite a good experience.

This was my favorite band of the night. They are called Drakskip. You can actually find them on google, or Youtube. At least you can here, although Japanese Youtube is not the same as American youtube (to my dismay!). Anyways, I was surprised when I was trying to speak to the guy on the right, outside, in Japanese, and he said "You can speak English." His English was perfect, and even slightly accented with some Scottish sounding vowels. hehe. he studied in Scotland for years. Very good group.

Oh no! for below, I have been trying to upload this amazing video from drakskip. But I've waited over an hour, and its not loading. :( Maybe you can just try googleing Drakskip or try

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKbdlEwXbV4

if you want to see how cool they are...

but here is a bit of the Okinawa music...

and some feet hopping fun from the rock/punk/I don't know what type of band...

And after all the bands were done, the music kept on going. Everyone who could find one, picked up an instrument and just started jamming. Tim (our couch lender) was pretty great at whatever her picked up.

At one point, all three bands, together got the entire audience singing "If you're happy and you know it."

There was a surprise... an American girl pushed up to the microphone to do it in English. Guess who that girl was? Yes, I lead "if you're happy and you know it"...in front of so many strangers. But I actually wasn't embarrassed. It was fun. :)