Howdy all, I’m writing this up at the conclusion of my time in Japan, about a week ago now. The latest you heard from me on the road was when I was in Tokyo. After a ballistically busy/crazy week in the Japanese capital, we boarded a Shinkansen and headed south some 1038km in just over four and a half hours to Fukuoka (also known as Hakata, there used to be two separated cities that merged).

This Shinkansen journey not only took us over 1000 kilometres in one quick hit, but it took us from the island of Honshu, the main island of Japan, to the southern island of Kyushu. I was expecting a bridge, but we went through a tunnel I think. I didn’t really notice until Google told me we were on Kyushu, which was a little surprising but we had just been through a long tunnel.

If I thought the station would be more relaxed than say Tokyo or Yokohama station, I was sorely mistaken because it was as busy as ever. Naturally we would go through it a number of times, so I had better of gotten used to it. We were staying in an Air BnB in Kasuga, not far from central Fukuoka. In fact we used a Shinkansen to get there for a little over three Australian dollars for a trip. It was a bit strange, the journey was just 8 minutes by Shinkansen. Still, it was cool to take a Shinkansen every day for the entire week we were in Fukuoka.

The first full day arrived and it was raining. I’ve already had my fair share of rainy days on this trip, but here was another one! On the first full day in Fukuoka I spent most of the day exploring the city. This included going to the beautiful Rakusuien Gardens which are well worth a visit if you’re in town. Exactly what you might expect a Japanese Garden to look like.

I visited three shrines on this day as well including the Sumiyoshi Jinja which was close to the gardens, the very popular Kushida Shrine which was close to Canal City, a large shopping mall with a couple of stages where they put on shows for the patrons, and further on the Tochoji Temple where they house a beautiful wooden Buddha. The Buddha was closed for a ceremony on that day but I returned before leaving Fukuoka to check it out.

After that I made my way to a beautiful park with a lake in the middle called ‘Ohori Park’. The rain had stopped for a while at this point of my day but by the time I hit Ohori Park it started to return, firstly in dribs and drabs. I took a short walk out along a long bridge to the island in the middle of the lake, Despite the inclement weather there were still plenty of people out and about walking around the park and taking in its scenery.

My next stop in Fukuoka was at the Payday Dome, which is where the local baseball team plays and that night the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks were playing the Rakuten Eagles, and even before 4pm there were long queues for tickets. But I was visiting a building attached to the dome to experience ‘teamLab Forest’, an interactive experience where they created a virtual forest and you used an app to shoot virtual arrows at virtual animals. You then got to let them go. More interesting and indeed more fun was the ‘athlete’ section which had nothing to do with athletics but there were some cool environments to move about with uneven floors and squishy pod things under feet.

Finally from there I walked a good twenty or more minutes through the rain to the Fukuoka Tower for a soggy but decent look at the city from above. The lift ride was cool and on one side of the city is the ocean and the other has mountains.

Over the next few days I did day trips which I detail next time as the aim was to do shorter posts whilst on the road. I did return to Fukuoka to have some Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki though and visit the Kawbatta Shopping Arcade to do a little bit of shopping. I looked into the Sewerage Museum near Canal City too which I thought sounded interesting enough to include in a vlog, but it turned out to just be one large room full of information only in Japanese so it was a bit hard for me to explore and include.

The city of Fukuoka is surprisingly big and you can keep yourself busy for a day and probably two. But it was the day trips out of Fukuoka which were the highlight of our stay in Northern Kyushu. So look out for that blog next week! Thanks for popping in today. Take care wherever you are in world on this fine (or otherwise) day – May the Journey Never End!