24 November 2015
Sand castle
Visiting the castle ruins of Fukuoka
It was looking particularly grey, and damp, so hanging around the city was the order of the day.
I decided to head west, after scrolling google maps for a while, and making a rough plan of things to see along the way, some I saw, some I missed.
It only rained once very briefly and the sun poked through for brief moments, but most of the time it was very grey, and very windy.
Along the way I saw shrines, ruins of a castle and some lies about it, a beach, and about 200 large under used shopping centres.
2 things I found interesting, I saw a 2 groups of school kids in different areas doing the same thing, like its some form of All Japan school kid emperors challenge.
They were bouncing a basketball with one hand, then throwing a tennis ball in the air, and catching it with their other hand thus forcing them to change the hand they were bouncing the basketball with. They would either walk forwards, backwards or hop whilst doing this.
Seems to me to be a cheap sport instead of letting the kids play soccer or basketball or tennis.
On my way back after walking nearly 20km, I caught the bus. Like most buses in Japan, its quite old, manual transmission. The driver would turn the bus off at every traffic light or stop to let people on or off, even if it was only for 5 seconds.
This is not a bus designed for stop start operation, it would shudder to death when turned off, then splutter back to life, complete with black smoke.
The only reason the driver would be doing this is to save fuel, which I doubt it would, but the impact this would have on the the engine, starter motor etc. would probably halve the life of these major components.
The driver also wore a microphone headset, and would occasionally mumble something, but most of the time he made a bizarre frog croaking sound. Exactly the same sound comic impersonators make when doing an impression of Bob Hawke. This wasnt something he did just before speaking, he did it for 30 minutes straight.
First stop of the day is the Fukuoka castle, this is the outer moat, a lot of the inner area is being excavated currently for an archeological study. Or it was years ago and they left a huge field of weeds in its place.
Right now this shed is all thats left of the castle...that was never a castle, read on.
Obviously, I did some heavy editing of this photo.
This is apparently the foundations for a castle tower that was never built. Probably because the emperor up north found out and put a stop to it, however!
Due to the potential for tourism dollars, the town authority has now decided to invent proof the castle was completed at some point and stood there very briefly, however theres no record of this ever.
Armed with this 'proof', they intend to rebuild a new castle with escalators and gift shop, and get it added to the list of top Japanese castle re creations.
The view from the top of the wall is not bad.
More view, nice grey sky.
Nearby is a park that houses a man made lake, that for an unknown reason is a 1/10th scale re creation of the famous west lake in Hangzhou China. I have walked around the west lake there, it took all day, I would suggest Fukuokas version is more like 1/50th scale.
The perimiter makes for a nice jogging track. Ducks seem to love the lake too.
Sun turned up for a while.
Nearby is an old shopping street, mainly fish and vegetables.
And anywhere theres an old market, theres a shrine. Because you have to be thankful that you got to buy a fish today.
There were shrines everywhere here, but this one takes the cake. Its bright red, I tried to get to the base of it, it emerges from the roof of a factory shed!
I thought it was a trick of angles, but no, it really does, hes a plan of it I offer as proof.
Now I am heading to the beach area, and theres a huge baseball stadium for the local team, the Fukuoka Hawks. It seems impressive, has a roof.
They have their own shopping mall. But theres not a single person in it. This is a theme of Fukuoka.
The nearby Hilton Hotel is the biggest most impressive looking hotel I have seen anywhere in Japan. Not just the tower but the whole base that it sits on with the big garden conservatory. I couldnt get up there to have a closer look.
The team is called the hawks, and their were hawks everywhere circling over head.
This part of town called Momochihama seems as though its a recent re development of a former port. Theres some big office buildings but not a lot of places to eat.
Not to worry, if you are a salary man here, a fleet of little trucks will bring you all kinds of cheap boxed foods for lunch.
The photo of this tower came out well!
This is right in the middle of a man made beach area, it is a purpose made floating wedding town.
The beach was clean enough, its one of 3 separated by canals along here, completely man made. The sand doesnt really look like regular ocean sand to me.
I really walked a long way. I needed to get over there, across this canal thats more like a small sea.
Unfortunately the bridge was a mile up stream. But the mountains look very close. Why do I keep reading that theres no mountain to go to near Fukuoka? Perhaps you need a car to get there.
The only busy mall of the day is this Aeon one, which was older but busy. It didnt even make it onto google maps, I came across it by accident.
My planned destination was over another canal. The ferris wheel was a welcome site, legs were getting tired.
Another abandoned huge shopping centre. This one is called Marinoa city.
The lego store was cool though.
It is built on and in old cold storage houses in the old port, which made it kind of interesting.
I had eggplant with cheese and tomato for lunch. I got upsold into the all you can eat salad and bread bar because I couldnt be bothered arguing I didnt want the 'set', of which I had one slice of bread and a piece of lettuce.
Down by the ocean in the shopping centre car park is what looks like a church, but google tells me its a fantasy wedding venue.
I was grateful to spend some time sitting on the bus, which in addition to the story at the top of todays pictures, went over a huge curved double decker bridge over the main part of Fukuoka. An awesome view, but I sat there thinking about earthquakes.