More Fukuoka

Before inundating you with more shrine photos from Fukuoka, I thought i'd show you some of the rest of the city. Even though I only had an afternoon/evening to explore, I feel like I did it justice and I really liked the city. I will definitely consider going back with my family when I feel the need to escape the island.

For dinner, I really wanted to try Hakata ramen. I love ramen, and just before I left Melbourne Hakata Gensuke Ramen opened in Melbourne. I thought I should try ramen at it's origin. Every night in Fukuoka, yatai food stalls open up all over the place. I headed for the ones by the river for the setting. It seemed to me that they all mostly sold the same thing - ramen, yakitori, oden and beer. I randomly chose one and ordered. Honestly, it was good, but not mind blowing, but I think that's just because the yatai stalls aren't trying to be anything fancy, and are catering to tourists to a certain extent. Still, I was satisfied and am glad I went to one.

The next day I was down to business. We headed out to Kyushu University for some lab tours, and for me to meet with the careers services there (for students, not me).

After we got back to the hotel in the evening, I was super exhausted, but managed to work up a tiny bit of energy to go to the Tokyu Hands at Hakata Station, just across from my hotel. If you don't know Tokyu Hands, it is a "Creative life store" basically full of everything you could ever imagine, from household goods, to super cute stationary, and luggage. There is a tiny one in Okinawa, but this one was about 5 floors, so I had to go in. The nest day we were supposed to be leaving on a super early shinkansen to Osaka to be at Osaka University by the afternoon, but Typhoon Goni hit Fukuoka, and we couldn't leave until 7:30pm. The day involved a lot of waiting and frustration, before finally making it to Osaka at almost 11:30pm!