FUKUOKA, JAPAN

Friday, December 08, 2006
FUKUOKA, JAPAN
Before any description of the trip itself, here is some basic information about Fukuoka…it's the biggest city on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's main islands…also located on Kyushu is Nagasaki, the sight of the second atomic bomb blast during WWII…among Japanese, Fukuoka is known for food, especially a particular type of ramen (noodle soup)…for visitors to Kyushu, the international airport in Fukuoka is where planes, trains and buses will arrive…Fukuoka was originally two cities, (Fukuoka and Hakata) that merged in 1889…the differences in personalities of each area are much like the differences between Garmisch and Partenkirchen, for those of you who have been to Germany…they may officially be one town, but locals refer to them as distinctly different places…the airport is in Fukuoka, the train station is in Hakata…Fukuoka has recently emerged as the cheapest place to fly to and get a Korean work visa…as Fukuoka is very well aware of it's proximity to other cities in Asia (it only takes an hour to fly to Fukuoka from Seoul, as compared to 2.5 hours to Tokyo from Seoul) it has become increasingly international…a number of Asian countries have consulates set up in Fukuoka, and Fukuoka has recently emerged as the cheapest place to fly to and get a Korean work visa…
Which is the whole reason for my trip…since I didn't fly home in between jobs in Korea, I had to do what is usually called a visa run…this trip used to be done in one day…they used to send you on an early flight, make you get to the consulate as soon as you land, then wait a few hours to get the visa processed, then fly home that same day…thankfully, that has changed…now the rules require you to stay one night…which still means you take an early flight, and get to the consulate as soon as you land…howeva, instead of waiting around for a few hours, you have the whole rest of the day to get out and see/do stuff…my flight left Incheon (where the international airport close to Seoul is located) at 830am…which meant I had to take the earliest possible shuttle bus to get to the airport…I'm a morning person, but still, getting up at 430am to make that bus is NOT my idea of fun…the bus ride and flight went smoothly…arriving in Fukuoka was easy…they have several terminals, you can take a free shuttle bus from terminal to terminal…since I landed at the international terminal, I took the shuttle bus to one of the domestic terminals, from which I was able to catch the subway into town…as I said before, the first stop was the Korean consulate, to turn in my passport, money and paperwork for the visa…I was glad I had gotten directions from a coworker, as the directions my school had printed for me didn't make a lot of sense…after that stop, I had the adventure of finding my hotel…as many of you know, addresses in many Asian countries aren't nearly so easy to understand as addresses in the west…luckily, the hotel my school had reserved for me was really close to a subway stop…the bed in the room was a western bed, single size…the room was tiny…there was a desk, but I couldn't pull out the chair from the desk and sit in it…there wasn't enough room…there was a TV, but everything was in Japanese…(not surprisingly)…I had my own bathroom, it even had a tub!!! (not at all common in ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Korea or Japan)
After getting settled, I set out to see the town…first on the list was Tochoji…a temple in which the largest wooden Buddha in Japan was located…it's a big big Buddha…the temple itself is small, (and very convenient to find, just outside a subway stop) and you have to go up a set of stairs to see the Buddha…it was basically one large (meaning tall, not long) room…while I was there, only one other visitor was in the room…there was a lady in a little side booth selling knick knacks, nothing I couldn't find anywhere else…I stood quietly (there was a monk praying as well) and admired the Buddha, and on my way out, paid for and lit a couple sticks of incense and a candle…while Tochoji was easy to find, the next temple, Shofukuji, wasn't so easy to find…I had to wander around a bit, and come back to where I started a couple times…after half an hour, I did find it…Shofukuji was the first Zen Buddhist temple in Japan…(founded in 1195)…founded by Eisai, who brought tea and Zen to Japan…the big stone from the emperor stating this fact is still at the entrance to the temple area…one of the temples inside the complex was under renovation, but there was a nice garden area to walk around…at one end of the garden area, there were a number of artists, all painting slightly different views of the main temple…I didn't find it to be that amazing, but it seems to be very popular among locals to paint…
Another quick subway ride (there are two subway lines in Fukuoka, I only rode one) and I was able to walk along a canal into Maizuru park…it's a large park area that goes all around the remains of what used to be the castle of Fukuoka…inside the park are several smaller parks/gardens…one I visited was called the peony garden…while I'm sure this is beautiful in spring and summer (for those of you who don't know, the state flower of Indiana is the peony, so most of us Hoosiers have seen plenty of peonies) it isn't much to look at now…just small mounds of dirt where everything was planted to come alive in the spring…the ruins of the castle itself are almost nonexistent…just one wall is left…howeva, the sight where the castle was located is on a hilltop, on which there is a platform conveniently built to take panoramic type pictures of the city…it's not that great of a skyline, so I didn't try to take shots that could later be glued together…but it's still nice to look out over the city, and it was great weather to do so…one of the more interesting images in the park was that of makeshift shelters…I got the impression that homeless people have created these shelters, but I don't know for sure if they live in them or not…they appeared to be made of that blue tarp that is often used to keep out rain…certainly large enough for several people to be inside…piles of different types of recyclables were neatly arranged outside each shelter…after wandering around the gardens and parks for a while, (several hours) I went back to the subway, back into the center of town…
While perusing the guidebook, I had decided to get dinner at a restaurant in canal city…canal city is actually one gigantic mall made up of six buildings…there are a couple hotels, a 13 screen movie complex, and tons of stores and restaurants…in the middle, there is a man made canal, hence the name…each building is totally different architecturally, and reading the maps to figure out where you are isn't the easiest thing to do…they all connect in different ways…the stores I saw were for the most part upper middle class stores…Disney, north face, gap, etc…bigger stores that don't have cheap stuff…while I enjoyed wandering and thinking about buying stuff, I didn't actually do so…I ended up getting ramen noodles for dinner…this is not exactly breathtaking news, but the restaurant at which I got them lets you order them exactly to your specifications…how much green onion do you want? How many eggs? Do you want pork? How fatty do you want it to be? How spicy do you want it? How tender do you want your noodles? All sorts of questions, with several different levels to choose from for each item…very cool…I ended up wishing I had gone for a higher level of spice, but was otherwise very happy…a nice walk back to my hotel room, where I fell asleep watching an NBA game…since the commentary was in Japanese, it was more for the background sound than anything else…
The next morning I was up early, and headed downstairs to eat breakfast (included in the nightly price of the hotel)…breakfast was most definitely in the Japanese style…rice, fish, and some other stuff I didn't recognize…I'm glad I don't find breakfast to be absolutely necessary…I only ate what I recognized…I'm glad I walked around a lot the first day, because this second day kept me wet…it just rained and rained and rained…I showed up at the consulate 30 minutes before the official time to start handing out the visas that had been applied for the previous day…fortunately, they already had mine done…I got out, and hopped back onto the subway, out to the airport…a quick change of flights, and I arrived back in Korea 7 hours earlier than my original itinerary had planned…
Even though this trip was short, it did give me the chance to see a new city and new sites, and I did get a chance to practice what little Japanese I know:)