Fukuoka

The Shinkansen from Hiroshima to Fukuoka was packed, I think everyone was getting out of Hiroshima before the G7 started. Luckily we had booked a seat this time and the trip was only an hour. Our Hotel is a short five minute walk from the station, It looks a lot classier than the last one, even has a full check in desk instead of a hole in the wall. We left our bags and headed off to find Hakata Old Town. There’s not much to it but it’s a nice quite street with older building and temples.

It’s warming up the more we go south, you need to be out of the sun in the middle of the afternoon. We headed out again about 5ish to find the Yatai Food stalls. They are street stalls along the canals selling everything from Ramen to Barbecue. Passed through Canal City on the way which is a flash shopping centre, but it does have a musical water fountain display which was pretty entertaining.

We found the food stalls but it was still pretty early so we wandered around for a while and then decided to have a drink somewhere first. Went into this deserted restaurant overlooking the canal and sat at the bar. So many staff in here and no customers. We sipped our beers watching three chefs get an assortment of food ready. We thought they were a bit premature because there was no one even walking pass this place.

A gong must have sounded somewhere because suddenly people started appearing from all directions. It’s funny in restaurants because all the staff call out greeting whenever anyone arrives or leaves. So there was a chorus of greetings for the next half hour. We sat at the bar with the best seats in the house watching the chefs put together some amazing dishes. After they’d dished them out to the function we’d ask can we have some of that. They were very surprised at first, then they thought it was funny, then I think they loved that we wanted to try everything.

It was a great night, like being invited onto the set of iron chef.Read more