Fukuoka

Fukuoka is the biggest city in Kyushu, which is the third biggest island of Japan, right in the west of the country.

When I came to Fukuoka I had come down with a cold, so was glad to have my own room after being in a dorm for the previous couple of nights. I didn’t do much on the first day except take it easy and check out the shopping centre.

Fukuoka is famous for its food carts which open after dark, so of course I had to try these for dinner.

Here are a couple of these carts which I came across during the day. There were several parked in various locations across the city.

At around 6pm, the vendors are starting to set up the carts and prepare their food. No customers yet…

I tried a Korean food cart first as they were amongst the first to open and they seemed very friendly. I had dumplings.

And then I walked around a bit more and went to a different food cart where I had the famous Hakata ramen, the local specialty.

The carts started to get busier now with a mix of tourists and drunken local men. Unfortunately I had some guys next to me who were becoming a bit too friendly and I had to finish up my noodles a bit more quickly then I would have liked to.

During the day I didn’t think that Fukuoka had any particularly exciting bits from a tourist perspective. Except the Asian Art Museum, which was surprisingly really, really good. They had the Triennale on in cooperation with the one in Yokohama and I thought that the Fukuoka one was a lot better. They had such a big variety of modern art created by artists from all over Asia. A complete mix of paintings, installations, video and photos. Some of it was really impressive and some of it was really whacky like Lu Yang’s manga style super hero “Uterus Man”.

All photos taken by me with my LC-A+ on Fuji 1600 ISO film.