Hello everyone!
In this post I will be talking about my wonderful time in the far west of Japan, Fukuoka and a day out in Kumamoto, but first I need to mention something I forgot to talk about when I was in Kyoto.
On the first day I arrived in Kyoto I decided to check out some temples nearby, something I forgot to talk about was a Buddhist museum across the road from one of the places of worship. I like checking out museums regardless of their subject and I was rather fascinated with this one.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about travelling from Kyoto to Fukuoka, this involved going back to Osaka to get to Shin-Osaka station which had the bullet trains!
This was the first time on my trip that I used a bullet train, if I didn’t get the plane from Tokyo to Osaka, I would have used a bullet for the first time there. With the train pass I got myself a few days ago, it allowed me to get a reserved seat on a bullet train for free.
It took just under 3 hours to get to my destination of Hakata station, which again was another impressive station, like seriously it was massive inside!
Might be a strange thing to say but Fukuoka city reminded me of London with it’s tall buildings which I walked by to get to my hotel for the trip, I wish I knew about the subway at this time as that helped so much during my time in the city.
During my hotels so far & what I did for the rest of the trip was to drop my luggage early before check in so I can go around places without any issues. It was already a long day with all the travelling so decided to check out the area my hotel was in.
While it was my holiday, I still wanted to get presents for my family mainly for Christmas. For my step-dad I wanted to get him something kitchen related, Japan is well known for their knives and after doing the research I knew of a place not far from my hotel that produces excellent kitchen knives out of a blacksmith workshop. As mentioned in the instagram post above, it turned out to be the most expensive thing I bought but was so worth it.
I checked out the market that was nearby before deciding to treat myself to something yummy before heading back to the hotel. Something I can bring up around this time was backpacks, because I brought one with me which broke in Osaka, got a new one in the city and then before the picture was taken above the replacement broke!
I did carry a lot on my backpack so that probably didn’t help things, so I was determined the following day to hunt down a place to buy my third backpack of the trip.
Check-in went alright and I spent the rest of the day in my hotel room planning out the following day, would I have a lay-in? Nah, I had some laundry to do and no better to do that was the early mornings when the cleaners are around.
My first full day in Fukuoka involved checking out an exhibition and doing some shopping. I found out there was a temple in the area so had to check that out, sadly forgot my temple stamp book so decided to see what my fortune was going to be, it was a rather pretty temple!
After that, I headed to Fukuoka Asian Art Museum for an exhibition of the manga artist & one of Japan’s most prominent illustrators of female characters, Hisashi Eguchi!
Something I wanted to get out by going to the exhibition was anything to do with the manga series called “Stop!!! Hibaru-kun” which Eguchi created in the 80’s. This is a series that got my attention during my manga binge last year because one of the main characters is trans gendered , well it’s never stated whatsoever in the show but Hibaru is so obviously trans and is done rather well for something that was over 50 years old.
It’s a super shame I wasn’t in Fukuoka for another 2 weeks as the person himself was going to be there to sign some stuff, because his manga series is from the 80s and it’s hard to come across the manga online at a good price I had to buy the new version of the series that they had on sale!
After the wonderful time at the exhibition, I checked out Canal City Hakata to get myself a new backpack which wasn’t cheap and check out the Jump Store too!
I decided to head back because there was a christmas market at Hakata station which I noticed the day before. I was right to check it out as there was a lot of nice stuff on offer, but it was the hot whiskey & hot chocolate that got my attention.
After that I headed back to the hotel because the day after was going to be good!
Sunday 17th November started off by travelling to Hakata station because I was going to travel from Fukuoka to Kumamoto via the bullet train (awesome carriage I was in!). When I got to Kumamoto, I then got a normal train to Higo-Ozu.
Why was I travelling this far?
The One Piece Statue tour!
This was something I booked over a year before because I wanted to do something One Piece related and I already saw the One Piece Tokyo Tower 5 years ago. I won’t go into the details of the day as so much happened. All I can say is that the day was the best time in Fukuoka and probably the whole trip as I made some friends from the UK & Italy. I’m hoping to meet up with the UK lot next year and Italy at a later date.
I let the pictures below do the talking (I apologise for the high brightness in the later pictures, had to edit those when I got home) but checked out a lot of statues in such great locations, we saw volcanoes (well tried to it was it was foggy) and a cute One Piece train!
Overall it was such a great day!
The final day in Fukuoka originally was going to be a day out at Hiroshima but the train pass for the bullet train and jr trains ran out the day before and it was going to cost too much to get the train to Hiroshima so decided to check out the beach at Fukuoka, I’m at a seaside city and not going to see the sea?
Downside that the sun didn’t come out until later but compared to British weather, this was nothing!
Right next to the beach was Fukuoka tower, yes another tower for me to visit!
After getting some good views, I decided to head back to Hakata station via the bus, something I regret not doing on the way back was checking out a Gundam statue which was a shopping centre but I wanted to head back because I was going to Tokyo the following morning.
I highly recommend checking out Fukuoka if you come to Japan!
Megan
Megan Leyman 
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