Fukuoka! Welcome to Japan!

We arrive in Fukuoka, Japan around 7:30 pm from Hong Kong via a transfer from Taipei, Taiwan. I was a little skeptical about flying on China Airlines, a Delta partner. But they provided us with on-time flights, good service and food at the Taipei sky lounge.

Temperatures are just above freezing, so we may be longing for our day time highs near 90 degrees Fahrenheit that we had in Southeast Asia.  I have my NorthFace jacket and Tracey has her “puffer” jacket…so we will see how that works out for us!

Over the next two and one half months we will be making our way across Japan to its most northern major island, Hokkaido and the town of Sapporo.

It is a short subway ride from Fukuoka Airport to our Tenjin stop, about 260 Yen, $2.50 USD.  Then about a five-minute walk to our apartment for the next five days.

We settle in and start the heater and the laundry…been awhile since we have had a washer! It also takes a while to get the heater working.  We discover a clogged filter!  A little cleaning and we are in business with heat.

About 10:30 pm we head out for a drink and end up at an Irish bar, the Craic and the Porter.  A great or not so great stop, lol.  We end up staying until 3:30 am talking, and hanging, and drinking with Mike, the owner.  Mike, 67 years old from Brooklyn, has lived in Fukuoka for 31 years!  We talk about everything from Japanese culture, to the US President, to his past girlfriends, to his Vietnam deferments.

Eventually at 3:30 am he sends us to a 24 hour noodle shop.  Just what the doctor ordered!

Sunday

We get moving around noon on Sunday.  It is actually very sunny and a bit warmer!  We head out looking for some udon.  

Google Maps guides us to a shop located on a corner, all writing in Japanese.  We enter, are warmly greeted with “irasshaimases” and sit at the noodle bar.  At least the menu has pictures, lol. It turns out to be ramen noodles, Hakata style. The name of the restaurant is Hokkaido.  Hakata ramen is a signature dish initially from the Hakata region, it a staple and delicacy in Fukuoka.  It is a white, thick soup that is made from pork bones, with thinner ramen noodles, and  toppings of cha-shu, chopped scallions, ginger, and sesame seeds.  The miso type broth has a little bit of a spicy kick to it.  Delicious!

After lunch we head a few blocks to the Tenjin Underground Mall.  As the name implies, the mall is, well, underground and runs for about 600 meters with over 100 shops.  

Many, if not most of the larger department stores in Japan’s larger cities usually have one or two floors, usually the basement, filled with spectacular food and groceries.  Often there are restaurants on upper floors. We end up at Mitsukoshi, which is Japan’s oldest department store chain founded in Tokyo in 1673.  

The Fukuoka Mitsukoshi is a beautiful department store with an incredible floor filled with food, everything from Rolling Stone’s chocolate, to sushi, bakeries, caviar, pastries to a high-end grocery with incredible food, sashimi, sushi and vegetables.  Absolute heaven…I could live right here! 

We do a bit of shopping for some warmer clothes. I score some gloves and an Icebreaker shirt of merino wool from New Zealand…love this stuff! Tracey gets an electric blanket, or as they call them here in Japan, muofo denzi! 

We head back to the apartment for a brief siesta before heading out for sushi. Just around the corner we found Sushiro, a conveyor belt type sushi bar.  There is about a twenty-minute wait.  The queue is tracked automatically once you enter your seat request in the “machine”. Problem, the machine is all in Japanese letters.  I take a guess.  I check later and am told I requested a table and not a seat at the counter, but they kindly adjusted.  While waiting, I offer my seat to a young teenager and her mother, they insist that I remain seated.  They bowed to me for my offer and when they were leaving to be seated they bowed to me again.  What kindness and respect! Or maybe I am just looking old.

Once seated at the counter, there is a hot water tap for making your own green tea.  We can select items off the conveyor belt or order from the touchscreen.  When ready the custom ordered food comes around on the conveyor belt and the screen in front of us alerts us that our order is approaching…awesome. We order plenty of sushi as well as tempura ebi udon.  This meal would have cost us over $100 at Yume in Sarasota…here, $26! 

We hurry home to our apartment around the corner to get out of the cold.  Tracey is anticipating her new heat blanket!

Monday

It is a cold morning on Monday, but clear blue skies.  After a couple of eggs for a late breakfast, we head out to see the Fukuoka Castle Ruins.  The ruins of the castle are located in Maizuru Park.  

The Castle was built in the early 1600s in the Edo period by Kuroda Nagamasa. It is surrounded by natural moats, rivers and mudflats. Many of the walls, some gates, towers and turrets remain.   

Much of the area has been turned into a park.  Even though it is winter, there is a fair amount of “green”.  There is a very large cherry and plum orchard that has actually started to bloom.  Many people are out photographing and one photographer wants to take our picture.  She hurriedly sets up her tripod.  There are not many westerners here as we have only seen a handful of non Asians the last couple days so perhaps we are a bit of a novelty, lol.  People working on the grounds are very kind and even seem eager to practice a few words of English with us. 

On the grounds once stood a baseball stadium.  When the stadium was demolished in 1987, ruins were discovered. The ruins are remnants of the Korokan, an ancient guest house for foreign diplomats used during the Heian period, as far back as the 8th century. This is the only korokan remnant found in all of Japan…amazing.

It’s getting later in the afternoon and we take about a 40 minute walk to Canal City to look for lunch. The walk to Canal City takes us through the interesting red light district.  This is a hotel shopping complex with over 100 stores, two hotels, theaters, all built around a canal with many fountains.  At the time it was constructed, it was the largest private development in the history of Japan at $1.4 billion.  

We walk home crossing canals and passing old temples.  We have a brief siesta then head out to the busy Tenjin neighborhood of Fukuoka to a sushi restaurant, Hyoutan Sushi.  There is quite a line indicating a 40 minute wait.  But after a few minutes, we are seated at the sushi bar. One of the three sushi chefs speaks a little English.  

We have the sushi special for the night plus unagi, uni, whale tongue, Hokkaido scallop, miso soup with fish…all phenomenal.  We enjoy a bit of small talk with the chef about the cold weather here and warm weather in Florida. He says we just missed a bit of snow here last week.  I enjoy sitting at the sushi bars here, trying to make some conversation and trying new and unique sushi at the chef’s suggestion.  Kind of like a candy store for me! 

Tuesday

This morning we brave the cold but sunny weather, in the 40s, to do a two-hour guided tour of Fukuoka.  We take the subway from Tenjin Station to the Hakata Station at rush hour.  Not bad, very orderly and on time!  We stop for a coffee to warm up at Seattles Best, along with a chocolate chip green tea muffin.

We head over to the Fukuoka tourist info center at the Hakata Station to start our tour. Hakata Station is huge, but we find our wonderful guide, Akiko, at the station.  Turns out we are the only tourists for the walk, so we get our private tour. We will spend the next two and one half hours walking in Fukuoka, the Hakata area. 

She explains to us that at one time Fukuoka and Hakata were two cities.  When voting to name the unified city, some Hakata officials missed the vote.  Apparently they were locked in a room! Thus, Fukuoka it was called! The real winner seemed to be Hakata, because to be fair it seems that so much has the Hakata name on it to make them feel included.

As I said, the Hakata Station is absolutely enormous and was built in 2011 to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the Shinkansen bullet train first arriving in the area.  The day before the grand opening and commemoration ceremony the Fukuoka earthquake and disaster occurred, thus the ceremonies were cancelled.

We also walked by the area where the street collapsed due to a sink hole and was immediately repaired in a couple of days, an amazing feat.  This was shared worldwide via internet at the time. Click here to see a time-lapse of the repair.

The Japanese adore their noodles and no more than here in Fukuoka.  The man who discovered and imported the ramen noodles is honored in temples, as are the udon and soba noodles. We see this honoring as we visit Buddhist and Shinto temples and shrines on the tour.

Our final stop on the tour is for green tea.  Everything in Japan seems to have order and rules and this includes precisely how to make and drink matcha green tea.  

The tea is made with powdered green tea and hot water, with two tiny scoops.  It is whisked to a foam, gripped with the right hand and thumb after rotating the face of the cup away from you.  Your left hand is placed under the cup and the tea is drank slowly, but in one tip.  Oh, I forgot a sweet bean filled biscuit is eaten prior to drinking the tea, to combat the bitterness of the green tea.

After lunch we go to a nearby curry udon shop.  What a great combo.  This is a tiny shop with about 10 stools around a bar.  The noodles are served hot with some tempura chips.  After eating about half of the noodles a hot broth is poured over the noodles to make more of a soup. Outstanding and perfect spice on a cold winter day. Our server asks us how we selected this place for lunch.  I am guessing they don’t get too many westerners, let alone, Americans, that stop in to eat!

On our way home we do a bit of shopping to buy a few more warm clothes.  The retail is amazing and everywhere.  We stop at a seven story place and buy some UNIQLO underwear, the long variety. I also purchase a merino wool sweater for about $20!

We head out for dinner after our afternoon siesta.  Tonight we are taking a break from Japanese for Indian.  Nanak is the oldest Indian restaurant in Fukuoka and just around the corner! Not bad if you have a taste for Indian food.

After dinner we head back over to see Mike the owner of the Craic and the Porter Irish bar.  A couple more patrons there tonight, including an expat and his Japanese business partner who likes whisky.  He and I enjoy several shots of Makers Mark before he turns to toast.  It is another late night of good conversation, well, at least some effort at translating conversation.  

As you can tell from the pics, it was a good night. We need something to soak up some of the refreshments we drink. We stop just down the street at BERU Kebab for a late night, rather early morning snack. One chicken and one beef, yum they hit the spot!

Wednesday 

We sleep in a bit and have breakfast in…eggs and leftover cheese naan from Nanak.  Delicious.  In the afternoon we catch the bus over to the Fukuoka Tower.  

The Tower is a 234-metre tall tower located in the Momochihama area built in 1989. It is the tallest seaside tower in Japan and offers great views of Fukuoka, Hakata Bay and the nearby sea, the city and surrounding mountains.

We leave the tower and these phenomenal views and head over to Robosquare.  Robosquare was opened in 2002 to increase familiarity with robots, a learning facility and to help foster production of robots. Japan has an aging and shrinking population, thus a labor shortage.  Prime Minister Abe sees this as an incentive to boost productivity through innovations like robots, wireless sensors and artificial intelligence.

We meet some of the robots and get to experience and interact with some of them! We meet “Pepper” who is already used around Japan in many situations.  Also, we meet a robot dog that knows a few tricks and responds to being petted.  This dog might be easy to care for!

One exhibit that was very cool was one where you could move around the world by looking at a screen and moving your hands to direct you.  We are able to find our old house on Arlington Street in Sarasota.  It is an old picture when the house was under “roof repair”. It kinda made us a little homesick.

From here we move on to the nearby Fukuoka Dome.  The Dome is where the professional baseball team, the Hawks play.  The season has not yet started but we hope to see a game later down the road elsewhere in Japan.  Similar to the US, the season starts around April 1.

What is kind of neat is that performers who have concerts at the Dome over the years are asked to have their handshake bronzed.  They are all displayed outside around the arena.  They include Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Paul McCartney and others.  I, of course, have picture and “shook hands” with each one.

We head back to our neighborhood to try a little yakitori at a nearby restaurant.  It is just before six so the restaurant only has one other table of patrons.  It is terrific to be there and have the attention of the non English speaking server and cook at the yakitori bar to help us with selections. 

We stay pretty safe here food wise, not ordering anything too crazy.  We sample beef loin, chicken thighs, squid tentacles, shrimp, sweet potato, shiitake mushrooms, and bacon wrapped asparagus.  The food is all excellent!

We don’t eat too much here and want to try the Yatai Raman restaurants here, which are actually small food “stalls”.  We walk by a couple of them off Nagahama Street, none are crowded.  These are more popular late night after drinking.  We opt out of these and head to Shin Shin Hatake Ramen shop that has always had a line when we have walked passed it.  Tonight is no exception but we only wait about ten minutes.  

It is lively inside, friendly, bustling.  We ordered two bowls of the traditional ramen and it is quickly served.  And it is, of course…delicious and perfect for a cold night.  

We bypass the Irish pub tonight and head home to pack.  We pick up a car in the morning and are off to tour a Toyota Lexus manufacturing plant and then off to explore the rest of the island of Kyushu!

And a few more pics!


 

 

 

 

 

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