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Travels, trials and travails learning to love Japan and the Japanese Language

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Japan - Your First Visit

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Visiting Fukuoka

A great place to start learning about Fukuoka is a monthly magazine that is also on line called “Fukuoka Now”

http://www.fukuoka-now.com/en/

It has a great English edition, and has all sorts of stuff about restaurants, events, etc.

It also has a good “area guide”

http://www.fukuoka-now.com/en/areaguide/archive/

Fukuoka probably has the best food in all of Japan. It has a strong Korean influence, so you will see Korean dishes there that you would never see in a Japanese restaurant anywhere else in Japan. Try mentaiko, which are a spicy fish-egg, Hakata ramen (a thick pork broth ramen that smells like ass and might make you sick but can taste amazing), and anything else you can get your hands on.

The city is divided into several neighborhoods, and has almost anything you could want. Tenjin Core is the commercial center of the city.

Tenjin has huge department stores and an underground city that snakes all over downtown. The underground city is centered around Sun Plaza and Tenjin Terminal, which is an enormous train and bus terminal.

To the west is Hakata, the traditional center of the city. Old-timers still call the city of Fukuoka by its traditional name, Hakata, and the local dialect is still called Hakata-ben.

By the way if you are interested in learning some Hakata Ben, check out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakata_dialect

or

http://hougen.u-biq.org/fukuokaben.html

You’ll make people laugh and really break the ice if you can use a little Hakata-Ben with the locals. Hakata has many old temples and the Hakata Gion Yamakasa. While you are there, you will see the preparations for the Yamakasa underway - people carry enormous, multi-story floats on their backs through the city in huge teams of loin-cloth-wearing men, while spectators douse them with water. The race is televised nationally on NHK and the various neighborhoods compete for time and for the most incredible floats. They are beautiful and put on display before the event.

Between Tenjin and Hakata is the island of Nakasu, which was the home of the red-light district years ago, and now is the home of various host/hostess bars, high-end restaurants, and the iconic Yatai of Fukuoka. The Yatai are the street-cart food vendors of Japan; they invented food trucks while were still wondering if the earth was the center of the universe. Unfortunately, the municipal government hasn’t been very friendly to the Yatai, and they are decreasing in number. Still, you can get steaming bowls of ramen, delicious yakitori, or lots of other amazing food from these street vendors. They are great places to start conversations with strangers and live Japan the old way.

To the east of Tenjin is Daimyo, which is the hipster-central section of Fukuoka. Bordered on the north by Meiji-Dori (the two main streets are named Showa-Dori and Meiji-Dori, for the 2 previous Emperors), and the Apple Store to the south, Daimyo is the Brooklyn of Fukuoka. Full of hipster shops, nightclubs, and awesome food, Daimyo used to be full of young people and neat little places. It’s starting to be infested with high-end shops, though. Still, I love it there. There is still a vibrant music scene in Fukuoka. For some reason, it is considered the music capital of Japan - singers like Hamasaki Ayumi, the group Perfume, Shiina Ringu (of Tokyo Jihen), and others hail from Fukuoka.

Fukuoka also has some beautiful parks - Ohori Koen is a great place to spend the afternoon and watch people - it’s the “Central Park” of Fukuoka City. There is a running path (people mostly walk though and don’t like runners), a good art museum, and you can rent boats and go out on the water. Yusentei is the opposite - it has a quiet little tea house and you can look out on a beautiful Japanese garden. Plus, you have Momochi park, where there is a beach and public swimming and all that. You can also take a ferry to a nearby island (about 20 minutes).

A good place to see all of Fukuoka is Fukuoka Tower, which by leaps and bounds the tallest building in all of Kyushu. You can see for miles, but of course you have to take a tiny elevator to get up there. It has a little cafe at the top and is right next to the SoftBank Hawks Baseball stadium and the beach.

Getting around Fukuoka couldn’t be easier. They have a very new and effective subway, and several train lines serve the suburbs. From Tenjin station you can get anywhere in Fukuoka prefecture by bus or train. From Hakata station you can get anywhere in Japan; it is a major Shinkansen hub - it is the end of the line for the Tokaido Shinkansen which runs from Tokyo, and the beginning of the line for the new Kyushu Shinkansen. There is a ferry to Korea and of course the airport will get you anywhere.

Fukuoka City is the main city in Fukuoka prefecture, but it also has several “suburbs” - parts of the prefecture that are outside the city but still worth a visit.

The #1 place I recommend is Dazaifu. About 40 minutes by train, Dazaifu was the imperial center of Kyushu 1500 years ago.

It has a huge main temple, but if you wander around a little you can find many smaller and fantastic little temples and museums.

The Kyushu National Museum is there, there is a large zen garden, and one of my favorite places in Japan, Kanzeonji Temple.

No one visits Kanzeonji, but it has a “Treasure Hall” nearby that has some absolutely breathtaking ancient wooden statues.

The prefect let me enter the main hall at the temple, which is normally locked, and I sat there for about 1/2 hour just speechless.

If you decide you want to rent a car and drive around, a great day trip is to Asakura and then Ukiha.

Ukiha is a drive up a mountainside and at the end is a fantastic and enormous garden. But along the way, you pass some of the only remaining Tanada in Japan.

Tanada are terraced rice fields, and you climb this huge mountain and can look out over them. They are quite beautiful.

You can’t even believe you are still near a big city when you are there.

If you want to explore Kyushu more, however, I have three recommendations:

First, Kumamoto can be a great day trip, especially if you want to visit Mount Aso.

Aso-san is an active volcano, and at the top has huge sulfur pools to which you can hike and/or take the bus.

The bus trip from the base of the mountain can be hiked, done on horseback, or takes a bus ride that I think was about 30 minutes.

There was a cable-car but it has been shut down lately.

Second, Yanagawa is Kyushu’s own Venice, a small city with many intersecting canals. You can ride a small boat while a boatman pushes the boat just like a gondola, and they even sing and tell stories (in Japanese). It’s a great place to take pictures, and also to eat eel - Yanagawa is well-known for its delicious eel.

It’s about 2 hours from Fukuoka by train

Third, you can always escape to Beppu, which is the Las Vegas of Onsens.

Beppu is covered in various Onsen hotels.

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