G’day readers, hopefully you are well today! Today’s city in focus is the city of Fukuoka, in the north of Kyushu, Japan and regarded as the island’s main city with a population of over 2.5 million (metro area). It’s a bright city which is fun to visit and there’s enough probably to keep you busy for around 2 days in total. Just. But that’s if you are going at a fast pace so maybe you could stretch it to three days if you had to.

So let’s do a run down of the places I visited when I was there. If you have seen my video on Fukuoka you will know that the day I decided to do most of my sight seeing it was raining pretty constantly and at times heavily for a lot of the day. I had day trips planned for the other days so I really pushed myself to get around Fukuoka in the one day that I had. I did return to the centre of the town after visiting Nanzoin to see the 41-metre Buddha to add a little more to the video on a cloudless, sunny day. But most of my sight seeing in Fukuoka was done on a pretty crappy day.

Temples

Sumiyoshi Temple

This Shinto temple was the first temple I stumbled upon in Fukuoka. It’s worth a little look, it won’t take a lot of your time, most Japanese temples won’t. There’s a number of toris (gates) in a row which you find in Japanese temples from time to time, and of course it’s set in some lovely gardens and there’s a statue of an ancient Sumo wrestler in the grounds too.

Kushida Shrine

This shrine/temple is very close to the big shopping centre of ‘Canal City’ and seemed to be a very popular place to visit. It dates back the 8^th century CE and had a large dragon statue there amongst buildings and the main temple. It is dedicated to the gods of Ohatanushi-no-mikoto, and is definitely worth a look-see.

Tocho-ji

This is a Shingo shrine, and perhaps the one I thought was the most worth visiting in Fukuoka (but hey, I only visited three!). Shingo is a school of Buddhism, so this is a Buddhist temple and it has a beautiful five-story pagoda and large prayer hall as its main features.

But it also houses a large wooden Buddha which is the main highlight of the temple. I found it initially a little tricky to find, taking the stairs up an adjoining building to a room where it was housed. You walk in through a little doorway to the side of the Buddha and there’s a small almost museum in there, and then it’s like a dark tunnel with no light top get out (which I presume was the point!). The statue is 10.8 metres high, weighs thirty tonnes and took four years from 1988 to build/carve.

Ohori Park

This beautiful and large park is easily reached by the decent metro system in Fukuoka. There’s a large lake with an island in the middle (reached by a bridge) and loads of people come to walk around it and relax. You can even take one of those paddle-swans although they didn’t appear to be going in the rain. Definitely worth visiting.

Shopping

You can definitely find loads to buy in Fukuoka. If you head to Kushida Shrine from Canal City metro stop, there is a large covered market/mall that stretches away from the steps where you walk to Kushida. It’s called  Kawabata Shopping Arcade. I bought some souvenir clothes there but there are loads of shops and not a bad place if you are looking for clothes, souvenirs or the like.

Canal City is a somewhat aging but still massive and impressive mall, with loads of different shops to shop at from electronics, to anime and beyond. There are plenty of food options too from a yummy okonomiyaki place we tried (see video) to the regular fast food. It also has regular shows (there was practice for an acrobatic show (or the actual show?)) when I was there out near the not so impressive ‘canal’.

Hakata Train station is surrounded and attached to a number of massive shopping centres too. I think the prices are cheaper than Tokyo although I didn’t really compare. But you would expect that? Anyways, Fukuoka is okay for shopping!

Fukuoka Tower

Standing near the ocean, a 20-minute walk from the baseball stadium, is Fukuoka Tower. For less that $10AUD you can ascend the 234 metre tower to the top and enjoy the views. Or not if it’s raining and obviously overcast as it was for me! Actually the views were still okay, it’s right on the ocean’s edge and the beaches of Fukuoka didn’t look too bad with some decent sand from out there.

Mizuho PayDay Dome & Team Labs Fukuoka

The Mizuho PayDay Dome is the main baseball stadium in Fukuoka and so if you wanted to see a Japanese Baseball Game when in town, this is the place to do it. It’s connected to a number of buildings, and in the BOSS E ZO FUKUOKA building – home to Fukuoka’s answer to AKB48 – HKT48, a baseball museum and other things, is this Japanese phenomenon called ‘Team Labs’ – interactive immersive experiences aimed at kids but interesting to adults too.

I checked it out, they had two experiences running at the time, one was ‘Team Labs Forest’. You walk into this amazing environment with images projected everywhere like some sort of forest you might expect in the movie ‘Avatar’. Using an app you look for creatures in this weird and wonderful world and then shoot virtual arrows at them, and then let them go.

Then there was the ‘athletics’ world where the floors can be challenging to cross, there’s a room full of large white inflatable balls, it’s really a trip and to be honest, much more interesting compared to the forest area. All in all it was an interesting experience, but not as mind blowing as some made it out to be. Maybe in Tokyo it’s taken to the next level?

Rakusuien Gardens

These charming Japanese gardens felt like I was walking through the quintessential Japanese Garden with a little pond, paths and a bridge. It dates back to 1906 and was built for a Hakata merchant.

And that concludes a summary of the places I checked out when I was in Fukoka. Going forward on Sundays I will be detailing the three day (or half day) trips from Fukuoka, all of which enjoyed perfect weather. Thanks for popping in today – take care wherever you are in the world, and May the Journey Never End!