10 November 2018
Reflecting on sumos in ramen stadium
A visit to the Canal City Ramen studio and an encounter with Sumo wrestlers
Tonight I hung around locally, and managed to see the red light district, light reflections in the canal, some sort of concert in canal city and then the tourist trap ramen stadium where I unwisely had ramen for dinner.
The little island between canals my hotel is on is actually the busiest brightest part of Fukuoka. Where I am is quiet and dark, then theres some shops and clubs, then the red light district and then everything comes to a point with numerous little bridges leading from a park to canal city on one side (giant shopping centre) and Tenjin on the other side (department stores everywhere).
There is also a huge number of the eat in pop up little food stands whos name I already forgot, and I should have eaten there, instead me and the other white people in Fukuoka congregated at the ramen stadium in the mall. I suspect the ramen there is not actually very good, but generally ramen is ramen.
The red light district was a bit weird so early in the evening, they seemed to actually want me as a customer, demanding I come in for a look. Very weird because I was wandering around with my big camera while wearing shorts and unshaven. I wouldnt let me in. Maybe business is now so bad they want white middle aged scruffy looking men in camo shorts with big cameras to come in to their weird clubs?
I messed around with this photo for a while to make it look surreal. The metal pipe is cool.
You say you like reflections, here is a reflection. I reflected on it for a while.
Statue and a reflection.
OK...now I looked this up. Google tells me these are called Yatai, my mother says they are called Baiten. Googling Fukuoka Yatai gives me thousands of pictures of food stalls, googling Fukuoka Baiten gives me none. I think I have been mislead.
The bridge if flanked by giant teddy bears.
Red light district, no customers.
Tonights cat is a black kitten. He rules this block. DO NOT CROSS HIM.
A few little boats go along the canal. If this were China you could walk across the canal on the actual boats there would be that many of them.
The bridge to canal city. Where all your dreams come true, they float them to you up the canal.
Here is a street full of YATAI.
Inside canal city some woman is singing badly to piano music. A crowd has formed as ever.
Its a canal inside canal city which is surrounded by canals. Those floating things are strings of millions of lights, presumably turned off while the woman is singing so that she gets all the attention.
Its Ramen stadium! There are 10 ramen places. They claim to represent different parts of Japan. I dont really see much difference. Each has miso, soy, tonkotsu varieties. Most have a spicy version, you can have with or without egg at each, none were doing the Chicken version like the special Gensuke store in Australia. In Melbourne they have an actual separate store for Chicken so the non pork eaters can be absolutely sure they are not getting pork.
Hmmm, I didnt really get what was in the picture on the menu out the front. That picture was bright red and the meat looked like it was a think hunk of something flame grilled. What I got was still nice but I felt a bit ripped off!
Its a giant wall of CRT televisions with nothing of value displayed on them. How much would it cost to power them all?
Oh no, there goes Tokyo, go go Godzilla!
Real sumo wrestlers! In blurry photo! I had only one chance for a shot and blew it. Oh well.
The sumo is on here next week, just as I leave. People were bowing and waving at these two, so I presume they are known. Or maybe you just wave at any fat guy in a dressing gown in Japan?
This is already picture number 600! A bright busy street of Nakasu.