Max's graduation trip to Kitakyushu

After what must have been a 70-hour work week, I find myself in the Kokura Nishitetsu Inn in Kitakyushu (Fukuoka Prefecture's second largest city after the city of Fukuoka). We packed last night and early in the morning took the bus from Befu to Hakata Station, where we got on the shinkansen to come here. It was a short, 20-minute ride. When we arrived, we dropped our stuff off at the hotel and ate a late breakfast at a bagel place. Max had a honey and cranberry bagel with cream cheese, and I had egg and lettuce on a bagel.

We were going to go to Space World, a big amusement park here, but we decided to go to a museum of natural history instead because of the weather. It was warm, but the wind was crazy, and it was supposed to rain. It turns out we made the right choice, because it did rain like crazy, and a lot of the big rides at Space World were shut down because of the wind. We'll go tomorrow.

The museum was great. My favorite part was the huge, elongated room full of replica dinosaur and other fossils. Max liked the cave exhibit.

We left the museum around 3:30 and hopped on the monorail. Max has been wanting to ride a monorail for at least 6 months, and Fukuoka has none (only a subway). We rode from one terminal to the other. Max was fascinated but fell asleep just past the halfway point. I woke him when we got to the end of the line. There wasn't much to do there, so we grabbed a very late lunch at a supermarket (sandwiches and sushi) and ate on the monorail on the way home. We took a bath at the public bath at the hotel and then went to Kokura Station (Kitakyushu's main station, and the closest station to our hotel) for supper. We had very good and very expensive sushi, but since there were only two of us, I didn't mind and endulged. Mmm.

We got back to the hotel around 8:00. We read for a little, and then Max fell asleep.