Fukuoka Memories: Day 5

15/11/10

I woke up today with a slightly less energetic spirit, because I knew that the main attraction of this Fukuoka trip was already over. No more hot springs, no more cool and fresh air. Ok, maybe the weather was still cold as ice, but somehow I just loved the mountainous areas more. Anyways, back to the main point of the trip - Art. So, we made a trip back to the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, this time not to visit the exhibits again but to attend a curatorial workshop by a curator in the museum.

Empty sculpture studio

They gave us a task of refurnishing and redesigning the sculpture studio, which was rather empty. So for the rest of the day, we brainstormed for different ideas. Firstly, a famous artist paid us a visit, and brought us to some of his artworks.

They weren't really that spectacular but how he explained it, was just so captivating that I even wanted to open up my 3rd ear if I had one.

After that, the curator brought us to a restaurant which was somehow affiliated to the museum. We had to take off our shoes and sit on pillows, with short tables. I ordered myself a really big bowl of udon, and i repeat really big. There were like so many things in the soup, but most of them were cabbage. I thought only Korea would have nice cabbage, but turns out Japan also has some really juicy and big cabbage slices for consumption. Take a look.

I definitely enjoyed my meal. So afterwards, we headed back to the museum, and amazingly enough we were given a very short time to consolidate our ideas and present as a group. My group came up with a theme of a country with both forest, urban and suburban areas in the sculpture studio, and each area would have paintings of the same type/ theme. So the curator gave us a thumbs up, which we were very honored to be praised. But there was another group with an amazing idea of family and a structured path in the shape of a house, with paintings going in chronological order from people who start off as babies to grandparents and finally in the other world.

After the presentation, the curator brought us to another shopping mall in a faraway place of at least 2 train stops to visit another art exhibition. That wasn't the main highlight, but that place had an amazing arcade. Nope it's not like Singapore where the arcade is only a shop size in a single level. It was 3 levels of hardcore fun. The TV Screens weren't like 8 bit or sth, the resolution was like awesome, at least as clear as a newly developed desktop screen or moniter.

One game that attracted me was KONAMI Winning Eleven 2011. There were like 8 stations and a big wide-screen TV in front for spectators to watch. I think it was the only LAN game in the whole arcade. But the graphics were like, you can never expect such good stuff in Singapore.

Here's a picture, if you want to see the soccer game, watch my video blog on my disudopwn youtube channel.

Then Guan Chao, Stephen and I headed off for our dinner at a small ramen shop. Again, it was in a single bill, but we had no problem this time. The food was rather disappointing, considering that we had very high expectations of Japanese food.

We went shopping around the Tenjin area for a bit, but because time was running short, we headed back to the dorm.

But I didn't sleep immediately this time. After showering in the common bathroom and dipping myself in the hot water bath, I stopped by the table tennis room where Guan Chao gave me a table tennis lesson all night. The most memorable thing was I learnt how to hold a bat to smash. I still need more work on my slicing. Whereas according to GC, opposite for him.

So that night was indeed a very fun one for me. It was much more fun than just spectating card games of bridge. This ends the day and of course I had a good night sleep again.