Day 5 - Sakura in Fukuoka part 1

When we were getting ready to leave for Japan, a bunch of folks asked us if we would see cherry trees (Sakura) blooming. Based on the timing and the "official" forecasts, we didn't have very high expectations. That was overcome when we arrived in Fukuoka which is covered in the trees. It was the tail end of the bloom, but still enough to get some good images and for there to be a lot of HANAMI (cherry blossom watching) parties under them, including a large Matsuri (festival) at the ruins of Fukuoka Castle. We made a visit to a classic Japanese shopping street, Kushida Shrine, the Fukuoka Castle Ruins park, and I topped the day with a visit to the Nagasu Yatai gathering for dinner.

Off we go.

The walk from our BnB was about 20 minutes to Kushida Shrine, providing you don't stop to gap or take too many pictures 😄. First encounter with the mass of blossoms was Reisen Park, which still had a lot of petals in the trees and folks under them.

Our path took us through one of the central districts in Fukuoka, Hakata. Hakata is one of the oldest settlements in Japan and steeped in it's history - from the oldest Zen Buddhist temple (Shofukuji est. 1195) to key to the oldest Chinatown to being a leading site for the Meiji industrialization.

It also has a 130 year old shopping archade, Kawabata. Like many of the similar shopping streets in Japan, it is basically a long mall with a variety of small shops, often with local product for tourists in areas near famous sites. This route took us from Reisen Park to the entry of Kushida Shrine. One difference for this mall is that many of the tourists were from Asia – especially Chinese – hitting the Japanese pharmacies and local Daiso.

It was Sunday, so there were also a lot of local folks around, especially families with kids, who, of course, are looking for the sweets.

Hakata is also famous in Japan for it’s Summer festival that has a lot of Mikoshi, floats carried by a bunch of people, often tall (more on that later) running through the streets of the city. There are a number of districts in Hakata which historically compete for best float each year. So, finding one of the Mikoshi sitting in a restaurant on Kawabata probably isn’t unusual (?).

Kawabata Arcade lead us to Kushida Shrine (Jinja), a center of Hakata tradition. The origin of the shrine is traced back to the 8th century as an Imperial designation of Hakata as the center of trade with China.

Kushida has all the expected features of old shrines with good funding...

Lots of Torii

Large lanterns and wrapped trees (purification for the spirits in the tree)

Then there are the more unusual features:

A different kind of "releaf"

And a rather TALL Mikoshi. This is one of the featured in recent Summer Festivals. There are a lot of stories included in this float depending on the level. From the Catfish rider at the bottom to the happy Daimyo at the top.

After wandering around Kushida Shrine, it was time to move on and find something to eat. Our next stop was the Fukuoka Castle Ruins which meant heading back through Kawabata mall where we found a nice, little shop specializing in Mizutaki chicken - a sort of hot pot/chicken stew.

The featured item is a ramen sitting in the Mizutaki stew with lots of vegetables and tasty chicken. They had a side dish which featured their chicken minced with shredded omelet and green onions on top of rice - my order (and not my last ramen of the day)...

This has gotten a bit long and I do want to get something out now, so I'll pick up the next part of a very long day in the next post. As always, lots more pictures are in the Gallery. More soon-ish (I hope)

[NOTE: The last couple posts had some issues with resolving some table content, which I finally figured out - I have fixed those so you can check the site to see how they should resolve.]