Fukuoka

April 5th
Fukuoka, Japan

Unlike my last post, I’ll actually write something for today simply because Japan rocks! So here’s the story:
It starts off with me and two of my friends (Terry, a singer from Tennessee, and Jason, trumpet player from North Carolina) getting off the ship to start our day in Japan. After a quick immigration process and a slight delay, we got off the ship to change some money and catch the first bus into the central area of Fukuoka. Fukuoka is a very developed city, much more like that of the big cities in the US, though not too many skyscrapers. The first thing on the to-do list was find a post office so that I could send my taxes home, something that we found rather quickly. After that, Terry started asking around about where we could get some sushi, seeing as we were in Japan. Oddly enough though, every local we asked about sushi (non of which spoke any English) looked at us terribly confused. Is sushi just not a word that they use in Japan? Eventually they got an idea about what we were talking about, or faked it, and sort of pointed us in a direction. So we set off in some arbitrary direction hoping that we could find something. After a ways of wandering down the main road and seeing the building start to shrink down in size, I decided to take a right down the first side street I could find in hopes that the more authentic restaurants would be those not located in the center of town, a thought that was quickly confirmed. Suddenly there was a large collection of really good looking restaurants with signs out front completely written in Japanese. The one thing we could read, however, was the operating hours, which quite successfully communicated the places were all closed. So we continued to navigate our way through the streets till we eventually did come across a place that was open and looked to serve sushi (as indicated by the guy behind the counter filleting/slicing up very fresh looking fish). We sat down (in this place filled with Japanese guys in suits, we felt terribly underdressed in jeans), the waitress quickly came over and presented the menus, and quickly realized that we had no idea about what the menus, and considering there were no pictures, we were kind of stuck. She pointed to what seemed to be the special of the day, and quickly ran towards the kitchen to show us what she wanted us to order. It looked great, so that’s what we did, three orders of the mystery special. We were all brought tea, and soon after received our meals. It’s kind of difficult to explain what some of this stuff was seeing as I really just didn’t know, but it was phenomenal. The dish she showed us was a bowl of rice with huge chunks of fish (our sushi) on top. I’m sure there’s a better term for it, but we’ll just call them tasty fish chunks. I have no idea what kind of fish it was, but it was definitely raw, and it was certainly great. With it came a soup with a couple clams at the bottom, which was great. And then some tempura, or fried shrimp/vegetables, also great, and then a couple other side dishes that I just really can’t identify. And for this really great meal prepared by a sushi guy who seemed to know what he was doing…$7!! This was something that you couldn’t get in the states for less than $25, and it was so good, so we totally lucked out on that place. Then, Terry had the idea at the end to order Saki (sp?), a Japanese rice wine. After Terry’s request, they brought it out hot, we poured it into these shot-like glasses, and drank this surprisingly strong drink, much more like hard alcohol than any wine I’ve ever had. But anyways, just another part of the culture I get to check off my list.
After leaving, we just started walking around, hoping to run into something cool, which in a place like this is inevitable. Some of these shops we walked through were absolutely unbelievable, especially the electronics places. I mean wow, these places are like Best Buy on crack, I was instantly overwhelmed. There were a ton of other places that were similarly exciting, but I’ll skip ahead to the fun part.
After running into some friends on the street, they pointed my group in the direction of a castle they had come across, telling us to follow the cherry blossoms. It is cherry blossom season in Japan, meaning these trees just explode with gorgeous white and pink flowers, making for some really beautiful sights. So we set off for this castle and followed the cherry blossoms up into this fort-like area. I’m still not sure if this was supposed to be the castle we were told about, but there’s no doubt that this is where the blossoms lead us. The fortress was set up to slowly spiral up as you walked around it, and by the time you got to the top you could really see the concentration of the cherry blossoms while looking out upon a seamless canopy of white and pink flowers. The grounds of this area through our entire hike up to the top were packed with groups of people sitting on large blue tarps having extravagant picnics with BBQ’s, sushi, fruits, and drinks, and many of which would smile and wave as we took pictures, drunk out of their minds on Saki no doubt. Right before reaching the top, a group invited one of my friends over to join them while he was taking a picture, which he declined, and then told me of when we reached the top. Well, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no way I’m passing up an invite to join a group of drunk Japanese people with food, so we walked back down, took some more pictures, and again got invited to join them, and we did. After taking off our shoes and finding a place on the tarp among the 20 or so people, we started to attempt communication. Luckily, there was one guy who spoke enough English to talk with us and translate for the rest of the group, so while everyone screamed Japanese at us and through food and drink our way, our older friend could provide some communication medium. He introduced us to everyone and let them know we were all musicians, and after everyone heard my one friend was a singer, they instantly wanted him to sing something. Well, on their request, we sang stuff like the national anthem, Frank Sinatra, Jingle bells (which they had a Japanese version for), and Row Row Row your boat, the American songbook. We would trade back and forth, and after we sang, they’d sing a Japanese tune. One of which was traditional to sumo wrestling, another of which required everyone to stand up and walk around in a circle while doing some choreography that everyone seemed to know but us. It was kind of weird, being three American’s among 20 some Japanese singing songs and dancing in this circle, but at the same time exactly what I was hoping for when we joined them. We stayed for 45 minutes or so, drinking, eating peanuts and sashimi, singing and trying to communicate, it was amazing.
After a few pictures, exchange of business cards to email the pics to, and avoiding the older women trying to kiss us, we headed out for what ever came next. I first wanted to make it back to the main road to centralize our location before heading out again, and then started looking for a good noodle place for an early dinner. I was so excited the whole day by the culture that I ate a ton just because I needed to take advantage of being there. We did find a noodle place, and though not as amazing as the first joint we stopped at, we still had a delicious noodle soup that no one could finish for $5, this time ordered by pointing to a picture. We left there, by which time my friends wanted to head back to the ship. But me, being the seize the day kind of guy, had no intent of leaving an hour sooner than I had to, so I waited with them till they caught the bus back and headed out on my own adventure, now in the dark. Though it wasn’t as eventful as the earlier part of the day, I had a great walk along the rivers cutting though the city and checking out some really hip places I’d love to come back to next time we’re in town. Also, in certain areas of town, the sidewalks fill up with covered stands selling food, stuff I’d love to hit up next time, but all things I had to pass on just for the sake of all the food I’d already eaten. I then made my way back to the bus stop, ran into some friends also waitin for the bus, and made it back to the ship to enjoy a night off.
Well, I guess that’s about it, busy day, right? I love having long port days, and Fukuoka was absolutely amazing to spend the day in, I can’t wait to come back in 5 days or so. If I get a chance, I’ll try to post a few pics on my blog and make sure there’s a link to them, but the internet search hasn’t been going so well, but we’ll see. Anyways, thanks for reading the long post and have a great one!