This Is A Lake - A travel blog

Yesterday I had a bit of choice paralysis when I was researching where to go today. It's my last day in Fukuoka, and I had all of Kyushu at my fingertips, so where to go? Friends' recommendations and web searches turned out lots of suggestions but no consensus. So I began looking into each one: there's Kagoshima, which has a volcano, but apparently the volcano's too active right now and so they cordoned off the area because of the toxic fumes. There's Kumamoto, which has a castle, but apparently the castle was damaged in a 2016 earthquake and is still closed for repairs. There's Beppu, which has famous onsen with all kinds of hot springs, but while I enjoy the occasional onsen I didn't feel like making an entire day trip just for that (I think it's like a 2h train ride from Fukuoka). So in the end I opted for Dazaifu, which is a small town just 20 km south of Fukuoka. I did feel bad for picking such a close destination having an entire island to choose...

Today I set out to explore Fukuoka, specifically the Tenjin district, as I had a nice walk around Hakata yesterday. I probably didn't need to go at it as hard as I did, but I'm planning to do day trips for the remaining two days of my stay here so I had FOMO and wanted to cram as much as possible into the itinerary! I started by walking over to the Fukuoka Prefectural Hall, also known as Kihinkan Hall, whose main claim to fame is that it's a 19th century French Renaissance building in the middle of Fukuoka. There was construction all around the building, so it was difficult to snap a good picture of the building itself. After paying the JPY200 ticket (€1.6), I saw that they make you take your shoes off, which is fine, but they also make you wear slipper, which is not because there's never going to be a pair my size! So I had to put on a tiny pair of slippers and kind of tiptoe my way around the inside of the building. As soon as I walked in, to make matters go, an o...

Guess who’s back! My week in Tokyo has come and gone, and now it’s time to set sail for lands unknown! I’m off to Fukuoka, the biggest city in the Japanese island of Kyushu. It is the result of two cities merging together: Fukuoka and Hakata, and this is why the same city has Fukuoka Airport and Hakata Station (this makes it very confusing to buy train tickets). I took the shinkansen from Tokyo to Shin-Kobe, which took three hours, and there changed to another shinkansen that got me the rest of the way to Hakata, which was about two hours and a half. It had been recommended to me that I needed to get ekiben for the train, a Japanese packed lunch. Station food, as it’s called, is not just any old sandwich in Japan, but a varied gourmet experience often based in regional specialties. I got myself the so-called “30 item Balance Bento”, which was as follows: When I got to Hakata station, I was able to walk to my hotel, the (inhales) FP Hotels Fukuoka Hakata Canal City. This was a bi...