Day 1 in Fukuoka : Visiting the city and history

After 7 hour bus ride from Osaka I have successfully landed in Fukuoka.

Fukuoka is a prefecture in the kyushu region.

Kyushu is an island located at the most south out of the 4 main islands Japan is made from. 

(Japan is a vertically long country)

So thinking that is going to be very warm compared to Tokyo (It's 15 hours south from Tokyo) I didn't pack very warm clothes.

My plans were very wrong, it was super cold and it was snowing.

I apparently picked the coldest weekend in the whole year to visit fukuoka.

Above is a huge poster I saw when I got to the station. I really like the guy on the top right hoho.

So from Hakata station, my roommate and I decided to walk around the main city of fukuoka before we met up with my roommate's friend at night.

Do love? for japan. 

Sounds kind of wrong but okay.

And then I found another weird signage when we were looking for the wooden buddha.

It's clear but it just sounds weird when you call it the "big buddha" when it actually has a proper name.

This used to be the biggest wooden buddha in the Kyushu area. 

You can go in for free and they have a mini maze which is pitch dark. 

It was actually quite scary walking into a place that has absolutely no light. 

Haven't experienced anything like that in a while.

Pagodas everywhere.

And as I've explained because its relatively in the southern area, they have many plants fit for the hot summer weather. (Probably 35 degrees in the summer time)

We went to go shopping at the canal city.

Moomin cafe! Moomin is a lot more popular in Japan in then in any other country. I guess its the power of anime?

And because Fukuoka is famous for their pork bone based ramen I had to eat some!

I have to apologize to my friend though because she doesn't like eating them but I insisted in eating it.

After eating the first bowl, I still didn't have enough and decided to go to a second store. 

My roommate went shopping again while I ate the second bowl.

Yum yumm.

(The spoon is not huge, the bowl is small. I ordered a minimini ramen just to see how it tastes :))

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My roommate and I then decided to go on a tour of the cultural heritage in the city. 

The tour was free and it was very informational. The tour was also done on a volunteer base and it was very helpful.

I overall felt that the people in the city were very nice and warm.

This is a special type of wall made from plates. Where the old wall is still perserved you can see this type of design on some of the buildings. 

Visited one of the most famous shines in fukuoka. 

Apparently three types of god which means three shrines are combined into one to make this one big shrine.

They carry around this big "mikoshi" which is in size more than several meters.

Mikoshi is a mini shrine that is usually made out of wood that people can carry around the city during festivals (Depends on the size but around 20 men carry this thing).

Although it was February, plum blossoms already started to bloom.

We also got to experience some traditional weaving as well.

This is me trying to weave.

This is my roommate trying to weave.

You have to use your legs at the same time.

It becomes quite hard when you have to put all of these decorations in the silk.

We also went inside the Hakata heritage museum as well.

These are the traditional hakata dolls.

This phone spoke to us in Hakata dialect. (Hakata dialect is suppper cute!)

We then met up with a friend in Canal city again to go to the apartment we were going to stay for the next 4 days.

This is the view from our friend's friend's apartment we were staying at. Such a convient place!!

And then we met up to go eat some chinese foods with the people in fukuoka.

The feast was already half way through when we arrived but

it was a lot of fun meeting new people and getting to talk to foreigners who lives in Fukuoka.

The food and the people were just awesome. 

I really like plum wine :)

Most of the people live in the distance where they can go home by bike.

I'm really jealous of that because you usually can't do that in Tokyo.

And my busy busy first day in Fukuoka has ended.