Fukuoka

We're wrapping up our month(ish) in Japan with a brief stop in Fukuoka, before we head across the Sea of Japan to South Korea.

Everyone we spoke to here told us how good Fukuoka is, to our surprise, as we thought it would just be a convenient port city. But the canal area, surrounded by 'yatai' street food stalls, is very cool. We went to a standing sushi bar for our last dinner and met some drunk Japanese nurses at a yatai who encouraged us to eat 'mentaiko', a spicy cod roe sausage which is a Fukuoka specialty. Honestly, a bit weird, but we liked the novelty. There are also loads of buskers, including a man collecting donations for the world's most laid-back cat 😅

This morning we hustled to jump on a bus to the ferry port, and during the rush Dan poured yoghurt all down his clothes and inside the food bag. He spent the rest of the bus journey sucking yoghurt out of his shirt. It was obscene, and the Japanese onlookers were rightly disgusted. A fitting end to our month-long tour.

Japan is excellent. Dan knew it would be great, and Chelsea has been extremely impressed. This is such a culturally-rich country: the food, the drink, the art, the architecture, the history, the landscapes, the language, the fashion, the people... there's so much to love. It is also deeply refreshing to spend a big chunk of time in a very developed country, as a circuit breaker after the enjoyable insanity of Southeast Asia. Apart from a few days in Singapore, we were expecting this to be our only oasis of reliability in an otherwise crazy year. Japan has absolutely delivered on that! This has also been bolstered by Dan's surprisingly proficient Japanese—we won't have that luxury in any other country until we reach France 🥲 We've waxed lyrical about Japan in every post over the last four weeks, so won't repeat ourselves too much here. But of all the places we've been so far this year, Japan is #1 on our list to revisit. It feels like we've barely scratched the surface.

From a logistical point of view, leaving Japan also neatly coincides with the halfway point in our year. The first six months were in 'tourist friendly' countries, with only a couple of minor exceptions. The second half of the year will be more complex, as we travel off the beaten track, and try to reach the UK without taking any more flights. Tokyo to London in six months across land and sea... is it possible? We'll find out. The hardest bit will be around early October (no spoilers on where), so stay tuned to see if we can make it 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️

For now though, Japan matane. Ikimashou!!!!Read more