fukuoka: where the wind smells like seaweed and the earth might move
got off the train at hakata station with a backpack that’s definitely too heavy and immediately realized two things: one, fukuoka’s airport is suspiciously close to everything (five minutes by subway? unheard of), and two, i just checked and it's 9°C with that damp chill that makes your bones ache-hope you like that kind of thing. my nose is already red. welcome to kyūshū’s north.
the city’s built around hakata bay, which sounds romantic until you remember it’s basically a giant bowl for fog. someone told me the kego fault runs right under downtown, and they’re overdue for a big shake by like...15,000 years. cool. the 2005 earthquake apparently made vending machines do somersaults. i’m keeping my shoes on at night.
if you get bored here, kitakyūshū’s an hour away by train, and there’s saga prefecture doing...whatever saga does. rice? pottery? no idea. fukuoka itself feels like tokyo’s scrappier cousin who knows how to fish and doesn’t care if you judge them for eating raw squid at 3am. speaking of, someone told me the ramen here will ruin all other ramen for you, but i haven’t found the good spot yet. crisis pending.
the bullet train station is freakishly efficient. you can be in osaka in 2.5 hours or fall off the southern edge of japan (kagoshima) in one. i’m half-convinced they built it so people could escape the humidity when summer hits. the sea’s everywhere here-three sides, according to the brochures i skimmed while lost in hakata-ku. genkai quasi-national park’s just north, which sounds like a fake name but has actual cliffs. tried to go yesterday. got rained on. gave up and ate conbini onigiri instead.
fun fact: seoul’s closer to fukuoka than tokyo is. you can almost see korea from here if you squint, or that’s what the guy at the izakaya claimed after two beers. the city’s been trading with the mainland since...forever? jomon period, yayoi settlers, all that. now it’s full of salarymen and students who probably don’t think about the fault line much. brave souls.
anyway, going to hunt down that life-changing ramen. or maybe just sleep. the air’s so damp my notebook pages are curling. send dry socks.
You might also be interested in:
- https://topiclo.com/post/moscow-where-the-history-is-cold-and-the-vodka-is-warm
- https://topiclo.com/post/portauprince-let-me-photograph-you-before-the-grid-dies
- https://topiclo.com/post/dakar-the-city-that-never-stops-moving
- https://topiclo.com/post/deneme-post2-6
- https://topiclo.com/post/chengdu-pandas-fog-and-my-brain-currently-leaking