Update, Famous Hands and Robots

Hello again everyone,
Well, the past few weeks haven't turned out exactly according to plan. But now, after a few weeks of slightly stressful uncertainty, things seem to be back on track.
I left my host family on the 27th and moved into the student dorms.
While there I contacted the first WWOOF farm I was planning on going to, but never got a response.
So, I extended my dorm stay until I could find another farm.
It took a lot longer than expected.
I managed to contact another farm on Kyushu but they said that this time of year they didn't need any help.
Since it was already the middle of January by this time, I decided that it would probably be best not to go to a farm nearby and instead make sure I secure plans with farms I plan to go to after I renew my visa.
So I've spent the past week looking for farms and managed to get a response from two of them just a few days ago.
Now I'm just working out exact dates and other details with each farm and trying to get over this cold.

Alright, now that that's out of the way, more interesting stuff/pictures:

Although during the daytime I've mainly been in or around the dorms, I have managed to get out a bit with some friends.

Last weekend, four of us went to a flea market inside the city's baseball stadium.

Aside from a few snacks, none of us found anything that we wanted.

So we decided to walk to a nearby hotel that is supposedly the best in the city.
Just outside the stadium there were many hand molds of various famous people that had visited or performed at the stadium.
Some of the Western hands included Jon Bon Jovi, Phil Collins, Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel and Paul McCartney.


Despite how cold it was (near or below zero at times since we saw bits of snow throughout the day) I shook a few of the hands. I'm pretty sure that my current cold is due to the weather that day, but now that I think about it, it could be from the germs on those hands.
McCartney never was my favorite Beatle...
Anyways, we moved along to the nearby, extremely fancy Fukuoka Hyatt.
Inside there was a very nice garden/restaurant which looked like it was all decorated for a wedding party.
There were also a few shops inside the hotel, one was selling kimonos and wedding dresses.


We then found an elevator that gave us an amazing view of the city, we ended up going up it twice. Two of my friends who had been to Fukuoka tower (the more common sightseeing spot) said that the view from the elevator was actually better.
Here's a video of the ride up along with a picture from the top and a shot of Fukuoka Tower.




Afterwards we reluctantly went outside into the cold and wind to see the beach for a bit.
On the way, we decided to stopped at a small shopping center. I can't remember why we stopped here exactly, but I'm guessing the cold may have had something to do with it.
Anyway, as it turned out, inside the shopping center was a small robotics shop called RoboSquare.
Inside there were various robots including this Hello Kitty one that's supposed to talk with you, but when we tried (in Japanese of course) it didn't seem to understand what we said...



This dinosaur robot was very lifelike. It responded in many different ways to noises and being petted. It would close it's eyes and make purring sounds when you scratched it under the chin.

After playing with the robots for a while, there were a few short robo-performances which we watched.
During the second dance routine by the robodogs, one of them stopped working, it was pretty amusing to watch. Luckily a friend of mine got it on film.


Afterwards, despite how cold it was, we decided that we should stop by the beach for a minute before heading back into town.
Once we got there the wind was so strong that we stayed just long enough for me to take a picture.