Of course I am back in Japan yet again - Oct and Nov 2018 - Page 5

My flight wasnt until lunch time and from the city to the airport in Naha is just a couple of stops on the awesome monorail, so I had time to wander around and stare at everything that was still shut and annoy the thousands of cats.

I was mildly disappointed I had missed this outdoor food court place, it has at least 20 little restaurants to choose from. It was very hidden away off the main street.

The covered shopping streets were dark, mysterious and abandoned. Darker than this photo conveys.

Japanese graffiti is generally written in English. Just as non American rap music is spoken with an American accent. Racist.

The market was kind of already open. But nothing going on. I found a secret staircase to the secret upstairs eating area. Cats were waiting for me to let them in!

I do not understand how this market survives, or how its open 18 hours a day.

There are thousands of cats to keep you company. They all seem quite happy, slightly murderous. Do not turn your back.

Not all parks in Japan are nice! I presume these guys are scaring away the snakes that have been allowed to regroup over the long summer months in the long grass.

Naha airport has an observation deck where you can take a photograph without glass between yourself and the view. Happy times!

Here is the line of school kids for security. It took forever. They were not on my flight but I presume the flight they were on was as horrific as the one I shared with school kids a few days ago.

Here is the view from my hotel room. It is right in between the two main stations of Tenjin and Hakata. Hakata is where Hakata ramen comes from, which is the most popular style in Australia due to Gensuke and Ippudo.

And here is my hotel room. It is comparatively huge.

Last photo today, I especially kept these 3 ticket stub things to highlight Japanese inefficiency. Each of them is a boarding pass. As you can see, I was issued 3 at various stages of the long winded process. At each of the check points they were all scanned, stamped or manually entered into the computer. The best one was after I sat down on the plane they again checked all 3, just after checking all 3 at the door as I got on. I believe I can solve the labour shortage in Japan, there are roughly 5 times as many staff as required doing this stupid paper shuffling. They can be redistributed to be nurses.

Fukuoka also has many canals and walkways along them. This is the one near my hotel at dusk. As you can see, still grey, but really warm, I was regretting wearing pants this evening.

Its all coming back to me now, here is a long covered shopping street that leads to CANAL TOWN, the giant mall with the ramen stadium on the top floor.

Tonights cat photo. I saw real cats but they were less willing to pose for me than the Okinawa cats.

Hakata station, why are all those people hanging over the balconies?

What the hell is this crowd for? There doesnt appear to be anything to look at other than each other.

Even from above I have no idea. I pushed my way to the front of the people crowded onto the balcony. How many people is it structurally rated to hold? I pondered this and then decided to go somewhere else.

Here we have the view from the roof, a rare thing, they normally allow you on the roof but then block the view completely. Its really only half a view, you cant look down, and the railing gets in the way. I had to heavily crop the photo that was otherwise more than half taken up by the rail.

Have a bit more roof view. My hotel is down that street somewhere.

The roof also has a small train that runs around it, and a 'train shrine'. Now I dont know what the train shrine is for, but theres a big plaque on the wall with about a thousand names on it. Did they all die on Japan Railways? Thats too many names. Maybe its the employees that worked more than 100 years on the railways (Japanese people live a long time).

Here I am in the basement, waiting for my Ramen. I had reason to be excited.

GOD FIRE RAMEN. They have the same thing in Melbourne. So now I dont know if it was the same brand store as Melbourne or if God Fire Ramen is an actual thing. The stuff that makes it god fire came out on a separate plate rather than already mixed in and the guy warned me. Pffffft, I added more chilli, chilli oil. It still wasnt particularly spicy.
My camera has a very shallow depth of field, I cant even get a whole plate of ramen in focus. Thats a feature!

Now we will examine the lights that caused the mass hysteria, heres some lights.

Here is confirmation the crowd was for the lights, and that the turning on time was 18:15, which is about the time I fled the balcony.

One more of the lights at Hakata city. I dont really get the hysteria, they are kind of nice but nothing super special. I wonder if Tenjin has a competing set up, I seem to recall that they do.

Last photo tonight, a cool smoky street side restaurant out the front of my hotel. No spare seats.

There are a huge number of pictures today and I already dribbled on for too long above, so dont expect massive descriptions here.
In the early light, the colors of the nice gardens around the Kyushu prefectural museum were rather subdued.

This is the outside perimeter of the main shrine, more on that later.

One last pre hike shrine shot before I come back in the afternoon and take more shrine shots because everyone likes shots of a red shrine.

This is not my mountain, but its looking colorful, nice blue sky. I was very excited at this stage.

Here is my mountain, and a road. Well its part of the mountain. The range extends along behind it.

I think I took this photo 3 years ago from the same spot, I will check later. Its rice.

Oh my god, they cut the heads off kittens and put them in a bag!

Now I am at the secondary shrine at the base of the mountain, where idiots were burning a lot of rubbish, still a common practice in Japan by farmers and shrine owners.

It was nice and colorful here, I have not been able to work the leaves out on this trip. Am I too early, too late, both?

Last one of the upper shrine, the rest was too smoky to bother, plus smoke and my camera lens is not a a great idea.

I passed by these name tags being handed out to the local Amway conference attendees.

Todays snake warning sign is particularly scary looking.

Ahhh, now we start our climb, for the first 3 metres its nice and flat.

Then the steps start, not too steep at first.

I was enjoying the light through the trees, breathing in the rotting decaying leaves.

The trail is mostly closed in until the top, this is one of only 2 spots to take in a view... of the wires above.

More steps, getting steeper.

Very steep steps. After this theres a few chain / rope pull sections over rock face, but very easy comparatively.

I never bring a first aid kit. I probably should. This is a very popular hike so Japan has provided one

Here is the other view spot.

These 3 old dudes were not my old man nemesis. He was waiting 10 steps ahead of me to finish taking this photo so he could continue to get in my way.

Some rocks and color.

I took a brief detour to examine this cave / grave / whatever it is. But this is not where I got lost.

Very colorful now!

Actually this is the third view spot, the view of the non city side. Its very near the top.

I thought it was about to get cloudy so decided here was the time for the awesome shot of my huge head. Last night I spotted a throbbing huge vein in my forehead. The internet suggests I have one of about twenty fatal illnesses. It is clearly visible here in a 1:1 zoom. I have a long neck like a turtle.

The top of Mount Homan has a shrine. Last time I was here there was nowhere sit. Just 3 or so other people up here today. Shrinking population at work.

Now we start with the view. A bit cloudy by now.

Here is a view framed by rocks. I climbed over rocks to get this rocky view of the rocks. I think it rocks!

Rope / cloud / shrine. In a rare event, this rope is not the black and yellow kind. It is just a much thicker yellow kind. I am an expert on Japanese ropes.

Now some redundant view. That is Fukuoka.

The other way, I am not going that way.

This is the way I am going. Mount Sangun is around there.

Last view, view with a cool tree. Well, last of the view for now. I cant make any promises there wont be more view.

After Mount Homan you have to descend down some chains and ladders before you start your ridge walk. I just came down from the top of those rocks.

After the first summit the path got flatter, more colorful, and devoid of other humans. Soon after this I took a wrong turn, and decided 30 minutes later that the path I was following was going down too far and was too under used to be the right path. I wisely doubled back.

It did however get cloudy, windy and bit mysterious.

This is nearing the top of Mount Sangun. I like this photo.

Hmm, the peak of Mount Sangun has been ruined by radar, mobile phone, tv and godzilla spotting towers.

I said there would be more view, heres the view from almost the top of Sangun.

The view from the actual summit was hard to admire properly. I am almost in cloud now, it was very cold at the top.

The summit area is a bit disappointing. I dont think many people bother.

So many towers!

After a few grey hours, I was back at the bottom, waiting to see if the sun would peak through for a photo of this man made lake. It didnt.

I found an exciting different way to go back to the shrine, it involved a tunnel. Everyone loves a tunnel.

And then the sun made a reappearance, just in time!

This place is very popular. School kids again as usual. They dont have schools in Japan, just permanent excursions.

Some poor suckers getting married. DONT DO IT!

Look at these annoying idiots taking photos of the shrine getting in the way of me taking a photo of the shrine.

I am always in Japan in time for the chrysanthemum displays. I like the bonsai ones more than these ones.

I was damn starving by now, luckily I had arrived back at Dazaifu shopping street. Why didnt I take my trusty calorie mate block with me on the hike today?

I snuck up behind these two playing dress up to take a creep shot. Actually I kind of think they were enjoying being the attention of everyones photos.

And for the last photo of the day, the view up the shopping street from the station. After taking this shot I was interviewed by school kids with a huge outdated looking video camera. They gave me a paper crane. Their questions are always the same every year when I come to Japan. Standardised textbook I presume.

Another night, another canal shot. This is a different canal to last night, but its still looking towards canal city. All canals meet at the canal city shopping centre. That orange dot floating in the sky is a tethered air ship advertising something.

The local headquarters of the sacred stonecutters. Strange activities go on in there.

The main street through Tenjin, looking away from the main part. I am not making a lot of sense here.

This guy is struggling to wheel his food cart across the road. At the same time, all the locals are waving hello to him, and hes putting it down to wave at them. It was quite amusing. Amusing to me at least. I am easily amused. I just never show it. Stern face always. 1000 yard stare.

I kicked this guy in his ugly face. His mask fell off.

The bright lights but quiet streets of Tenjin. Maybe I missed the main bit tonight?

Tonights cat shot! This poor little guy is as tired as I am. I think I could sleep on a clear perspex box also. Japanese hotel beds are nearly that hard. I kind of like it.

My dinner! Its something different I guess. Soba and lots of other things. I think most are miso related, or tofu related, I didnt really know what most of it was. Theres also the savory egg custard under one of those lids with the mushrooms baked in. I think it was all vegetarian, who knows!
I tried for a non blurry food shot tonight, less arty, more standard picture menu shot. Actually it wasnt all vegetarian now that I look at it, the seaweed roll things were full of hunks of raw fish.

Ippudo! I dont know where the original store is, I thought maybe this was it as its large and in a busy area, but then I saw 2 more just like it within a few blocks of this one. I still have not been to the Melbourne store due to the huge lines, but I have been to the Sydney, Perth and Taipei stores.

Here is a crappy shot of a crappy shrine in amongst the department stores. You go here to pray for a bargain.

Here is tonights BAITEN. Word courtesy of my mother. They have wisely set up by the torii gate to get more tourists. I dont know what they are serving, but I like this photo. Its the only photo from tonight that I like.

Here, have a bit more bright lights of Tenjin, with the fancy stores and their overpasses.

This is the Daimaru atrium and its huge Christmas tree. I think it was fancier the last time I was here? I took a photo then, I will check later, or not, I dont know, maybe I cant be bothered, I am just going to trail off in this rant now.

Last time I was here this is where the Ramen fair was. Today its the Fukuoka marathon expo, whatever that is. But when is the marathon? None of the signs had a date. Is it too late for me to enter?

We start our journey today with the Tenjin underground shopping streets which extend many kilometres (no exaggeration) and connect multiple stations. I did not have to go far to get to my station, but since I was early I walked a bit of a lap anyway.

Arriving at Karatsu I was greeted by the pine cone monster. I now understand he was advertising the coastal pine forest.

Redundant photo of station just so I could remember the name of the place I went to. The city area had nothing of interest, it was all shut while I walked through.

The main street has lots of statues of boys playing flutes. I dont know what to think about this.

Before long I arrived at the beach, and could see the full impact of todays burn off pollution. I saw lots of farmers fires from the train. They need to stop this bullshit.

Ahhh, beautiful Japan.

Todays cat was pretty cool, very friendly, followed me for ages.

The bay has many islands and causeways and breakwaters and boats. There were ferries heading out to islands you cant see through the smoke.

The castle was not far from the station despite my longer course along the beach. Before I knew it I was ascending the stairs through an army of guys with leaf blowers and old ladies raking up the blown leaves. Also, Japanese women, cut this shit you do where you pretend to be exhausted climbing a few stairs and making ridiculous exasperated noises and extending a hand to your boyfriend / husband begging for him to hold your arm like that will help. I know its fake. You only do it when you are with your male partner. A group of women on their own do not suffer from this idiotic behaviour.

I liked this view a lot. As you shall soon see, I took it from various heights, and then later in the day you shall see it again from my surprise mountain lookout.

Here is the steel and concrete castle. A white one not a red one or a gold one. I think theres a silver one too, but most are white.

I decided it was worth a second photo.

Another shot of the bay, pollution not as bad from this angle. Those two chimneys are part of a huge industrial complex. Strange place to put it.

Its about $5 to go in the castle. Its really only worth paying if you want to photograph the higher view. Inside theres a couple of pieces of pottery and then the rest of the floors have stuff like this. There is absolutely zero English. I never really read the stuff anyway, but I do like to see Samurai outfits and swords. There were none today.

Now some view shots. Theres that cool ISTHUMUS again, I would head that way after leaving the castle. The small mountain I would go up later is also behind it.

Another shot of the islands with a bit of the castle.

And a higher perspective of the chimneys.

This is the sizeable town of Karatsu. It looks nice from up here. I think lots of it is abandoned. This shot cleaned up ok!

Looking along the river however, and you can see lots of smoke hanging around.

One last anime character to wave goodbye as I left the castle.

I decided to take another shot from the ISTHUMUS, which is todays word of the day.

Work time! Notice these trucks have skirts / rails along the side between the wheels and even hanging from the back to stop people / bikes etc going under the wheels? I have been asking at work why we dont have that and I never get a straight answer. I am convinced the last 2 fatalities where I work would have been avoided if our trucks had those. I first noticed them in Taiwan, land of the scooter. Trucks in Australia just dont have these, why not?

I yelled at this sound level measuring equipment for ages to see if I could set a new high score.

Now its time for the coastal pine forest. It was planted by humans. Its pine trees, the non farming for timber kind, or maybe they just left them to grow into weird shapes.

Have a bit more pine forest. You will see later that from above its huge and impressive looking.

At this point I had spotted the mountain lookout, so I bounded across a rice field.

And there she is, todays bonus mini mountain!

There was a huge gate to get you started, also a good place to quietly urinate before jogging up the hill after I had drank a litre of water in preparation!

At about this point, there were lots of GLAMPING spots, which is glamorous camping, they all had no customers. One guy stopped me and tried to sell me a camping spot. I told him I was just jogging back to Fukuoka over all the mountains, and that I have no gear, no water, no map.

The view down the coast was rewarding. So many mountains! Who said Kyushu has no mountains? They are not very tall but look prominent because they exend up out of the ocean.

Obviously at the top, theres a shrine. I rang the bells etc. There was no one there.

Ahhhhhh, now the excellent view from the top. I was so glad I made the effort of an unplanned mountain. This is probably photo of the day.

Here you can see half the coastal pine forest, extending up the ISTHUMUS and over the bridge to the castle with the chimneys in the distance, basically the path I had walked to get to this point.

And as you can see, the coastal pine forest extends in the other direction also. I sure did say 'coastal pine forest' a lot today. Also that pointy mountain that sticks up near the right edge. It looks big but I cant find it on a map. This bugs me as it must be near the ocean and near the train line. I feel it must have trails up it.

Heres the guys about to leap off the cliff with a few poles, bed sheets and bits of wire. Good luck with that.

I was keeping a close eye on my bulging forehead vein!

The top of this mountain is car accessible and has a nice park with gardens, a lake, a bridge. I dont think you are supposed to walk up like I did.

I selected some back roads to Hamasaki station. These ones appear earthquake damaged! I saw something similar in Taiwan. I was concerned I might fall into a sinkhole.

Last pic of the day, looking back into the smoke, over a a rice field, with bonus mountain on the left. Todays rest day was a great day!

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.