Epic Golden Week Adventure - Fukuoka / Hakata

Looking through Lonely Planet on the bus to Fukuoka it seemed to be a little bit like Osaka with lots of places to shop, eat and a ferris wheel but not so many touristy places which was perfect as we only had a day and a half and the Hakata Dontaku Matsuri was on for both of those days. There was an Asahi Brewery (but it was closed on public holidays) and an aquarium but after taking the tram around everywhere in Nagasaki yesterday we decided to explore the central city on foot. That night we arrived, checked into our hostel fine and went out for a late motsunabe dinner - although the description doesn't sound that delicious it was great

We caught the opening parade in front of the new JR Hakata Station from 10am and then the main parade from a good spot on Meiji-dori we found next to some old ladies who gave us some of their ground sheet to sit on as they didn't want us getting cold. The parade itself reminded me of the Sakai Grand Parade with lots of community groups and tons of cute children.

After leaving the parade we wandered back towards the station and stumbled across the beautiful wooden Buddha (said to be the largest in Japan) at Tocho-ji. I know I shouldn't compare but what the Great Buddhas in Nara and Kamakura have in granduer this one made up for in grace. Unfortunately there are no pictures allowed but here is one of Mindy lighting some incense just outside, I did find this one online (god knows how they managed to sneakily take it the the photo nazi grandma milling around) but it doesn't do it anywhere near the justice it deserves anyway so I will just have to highly recommend you visit if you find yourself in that part of the country.

I could have stayed there admiring the Buddha for hours but we had something more pressing to get to - a beer festival on the rooftop of the new JR Hakata Station. It was pretty bustling up there as the new building had only opened in March and the beer festival was a little smaller than we anticipated (but with a miniature train, dog run and shrine on the roof I guess there's only so much space) but we enjoyed the chance to sit back and relax for a bit.

That evening we checked out Kushida-jinja (home of the Hakata Gion Yamakasa Matsuri) and decided to eat tonkotsu raamen (another local dish) at one of the yatai stalls on the Nakagawa River, there was a whole stretch of them that were absolutely packed but we found one with some space just next to the Haruyoshi Bridge and then karaoked the night away

Even though we had a pretty relaxed morning we had to check out pretty early (before the hostel reception opened) because as I mentioned before some of the planning for this trip was left a little bit last minute and we could only get three beds for the second night in Fukuoka (what can you expect with a string of public holidays and a massive festival on, although the three beds were in a private room so sleeping four was fine, I just didn't want to get nabbed on the way out) We had an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at a hotel on the way to the station and took a bus out to the ferry terminal. Interesting filling out arrival/departure/customs documents to get on a boat but we had a nice five hour sail across and even got a bit of a nap in before hitting Busan for part two of this epic golden week adventure ;)