After finally arriving in Fukuoka, after more than 12 hours on trains, Ken, Caelan, Jessie and their friend Keith (who lives in Fukuoka) picked us up from the train station. They took us on a walking tour of Fukuoka. Our first stop was the Genkou-Bourui Stone wall at Hakata Bay. The stone wall is the remains of a wall to protect the city against the Mongolian invasion in the late 13th century.
After visiting the wall we walked through downtown to get to Fukuoka Tower. As we were walking it started raining, not too hard at first. It was kind of refreshing since it had been so hot.
After taking these photos it started torrential raining!! Unfortunately none of us had umbrellas (and I’m not sure they would have even helped us), so we were all soaked to the core. It felt as if we had all taken a shower with our clothes on. Even our underwear was soaked. I had to run into a store to get a plastic bag to protect my camera.
Right in front of the Fukuoka Tower there is a layout of Buddha statues surrounding a center stone. If you stand on the stone and talk, your voice will echo, but only in that spot!
We arrived at the tower and took the elevator up the tower, still soaked, and now freezing from the air conditioning. The view of the city was very nice. Fukuoka looks like a more modern city than the other cities we have visited, and it is right on the water.
The plan was to sing karaoke after visiting the tower, so we all changed into dry clothes, us from our backpacks (which we had left in a locker at the train station) and everyone else bought new clothes. We spent the rest of the night singing karaoke, in traditional Japanese style, in a private room.
We saw the weirdest thing on our way home that night. We saw a group of middle-aged Japanese men in business suits standing outside a bar. They all picked one of the men up and began throwing him up in the air and catching him. They did this a few times. After asking a few people what the purpose of this was I found out that Japanese men do this to very drunk men in an attempt to sober them up! Personally, I would not want to be thrown in the air multiple times while drunk, I don’t think it would have a sobering effect on me, it might actually make me much more sick!
After Karaoke we headed over to Keith’s house and put down cushions on the floor so we could sleep 8 people in his small apartment: 2 on the couch, 2 on the bed and 4 on the floor.
The next day was the day of the big beach party, but it was raining really hard again. We decided to go anyway because we heard the party was moved indoors. We were, again, soaked to the core on the way to the party, so much that when we arrived we had to wring out our clothing in the bathtub to get all the excess water out!!
When the rain lightened up, a few of us went to the beach to swim. The beach was so beautiful!! There were mountains surrounding the beach in every direction. I left the party shortly after swimming because I didn’t want to stay wet for the rest of the night, and I had no towel or dry clothing. We spent the rest of the night watching Sex and the City at Keith’s house.
The following day we wanted to have another easy day because we were still tired from the constant touring around. So we went back to the beach, but this time the weather was beautiful and sunny!
Ken was still recovering from his 5 jellyfish stings from the day before. Luckily he was the only one stung though. We spent the day playing in the water and tanning.
This beach was a different one than the one we went to the previous day, but it was still gorgeous. There were beautiful mountains everywhere, and a castle on the top of one of them, overlooking the water!
After the beach, we rested a bit at Keith’s house, and then we went out for an Okonomiyaki dinner (egg pancakes) and then we went to a traditional Japanese style bar called an Izakaya. The Izakaya was pretty cool. Everyone must remove their shoes to enter, and walk shoeless to the very short table. You have to sit on the floor, but there is a hole under the table to put your legs in. Each table has its own booth, surrounded with curtains for privacy, and there is a button on each table that you press for service.
After, we went back to Keith’s house to sleep. The 2.5 days in Fukuoka were the most relaxing days of the entire trip so far. It was so nice to finally swim, and sleep in and have no time restraints! We left his house at 6:30am the next morning to head to Miyajima.
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