Yanagawa

Second day in Fukuoka
Fukuoka doesn’t t seem to have too many attractions in the main city area so we are going for a day trip down to Yanagawa. It’s about an hour on the local express train. It’s a bit overcast today and we debated taking the umbrellas but left them behind in the end. So of course when we got to Yanagawa it was raining.

We’re going on a canal boat trip and luckily the operators are prepared and had raincoats and hats for us all.
They call this the Venice of Kyushu, but of artistic licence but they are pretty canals and we had a lovely hour long tranquil trip which ended in Yanagawa old town.

We had an old guy driving the boat? Well they push it along with a big long stick. He did not stop talking for more than ten seconds the whole time, was a pretty funny commentary by all accounts, lots of laughing and nodding from the other boat trippers. We of course didn’t understand a word of it. 😂

Yanagawa restaurants are famous for eel so of course we had to try that. Sounds gross but it’s actually very tasty and a bit of a delicacy so it was probably the most expensive meal we’ve had so far.

There is obviously less English tourist the further south we go. Much fewer English signs on Stations and menus. Makes for some entertaining travel excursions. We managed to get ourselves back to Fukuoka though.

Now tonight we need to try out the Yatai stalls we bypassed yesterday. But first we went back to visit our favourite restaurant.. oh they were all so pleased to see us again. They made us up a plate of some gristly meat. Pretty sure it was gizzard, wasn’t too bad, Graham loved it. Then we cooked us some Kobe Beef and Fish with chilli. They were both delicious especially the beef. Graham I think had had one too many beers and decided to eat the whole chilli in the fish dish. Holy Moly I thought he was going to have a heart attack. The people are so lovely here, one of the waitresses gave me a hug as we left.

I know it seems like we’re eating a lot but these are all only small dishes I swear. We tried out the stalls on the way home and they were tasty but not a patch on our Restaurant. We sat next to a race car driver and his girl friend. He’d been to Australia and won Bathurst 12 hour in 2015. Graham thinks it must have been one of the support races. He lives in Tokyo and is here for a race somewhere. Gave us tips for Tokyo and places to visit. They wanted to know what we were doing in Tokyo and after telling them about the guitar show it turns out his father is a professional guitar player so who know we might see his Dad in Tokyo.Read more