the flight from seoul to fukuoka was great, despite its ungodly hour. japan customs was a bit more intense than korea's though. i'm talking fingerprints and photos, plus a fancy sticker stamp in the passport. no old fashioned ink here! everything went smoothly though. we got our bags, did a quick reassessment of our plans, found a decent tourist map and headed to hakata train station. so fukuoka and hakata are actually 1 city, but the former refers mainly to the airport area and the latter refers to the train area, which is where we spent most of our time. at the train station we managed to get our JR passes validated, found lockers to store our packs and then we set off to find sumiyoshi shrine. while wandering we came across what would soon become a daily tradition: hitting up the vending machine. seriously, they have vending machine for everything in japan - from food and drinks to underwear and neckties. and the best hot milk tea i've ever had in my life. ever.
this is also when we realized to pay closer attention to the scale of the map.
we found where we needed to be going based on the curves and intersecting shapes of the streets and landmarks. but most streets weren't labeled in real life, despite being named on the map, which made things somewhat challenging. we walked for what we felt was a fair amount, but no shrine was in site. eventually we came to a river - landmark! - and realized we had overshot our distance by a lot. actually we walked twice as long as we needed to. so did a 180, and when we did come across the entrance to the shrine, we both couldn't figure out how we possibly missed it. oh well. it was fairly large, and we saw some monks running around preparing for and performing a ceremony of sorts. couldn't see anything b/c it was behind closed doors, but it sounded interesting.
found our way out again, and headed towards canal city - a mega-complex of shops, restaurants, hotels, etc. i love japanese food back home, so during this trip eating is one thing i was very much looking forward to. because each region of the country is known for a particular kind of cuisine, or meibutsu, we decided that we would strive to eat the specialty wherever we were. and in the kyushu area, it is ramen. we heard about ramen stadium and so what better place to get our food then that? it's an entire floor of ramen vendors, but our experience ordering food proved more arduous than expected.
here's the deal: you walk into this crazy world of ramen vendors. each restaurant has hosts standing outside trying to entice you into their business by yelling, hopefully louder than the next guy. we walked around a bit, a little overwhelmed, but eventually settled on one that had 2 pleasant looking women beckoning us in. however, when we went to enter it, we found we couldn't - and the two women proceeded to flutter around us, speaking to us in very fast japanese and pointing to various pictures. confused, we initially walked away and decided to just observe a bit more. turns out, you had to actually go to this vending machine to pick what food you wanted by pressing any combination of buttons and then pay the machine. it then pops out a ticket which you show to the hosts who then seat you at a counter. the cooks behind the counter promptly take your ticket and within minutes your food is presented. it's actually quite an efficient system! what was challenging was that the words were only in japanese, and it was hard to decipher the limited pictures. so with a leap of faith we picked the 'daily special' on the poster, and hoped for the best. it was incredibly salty. but still very tasty. and our first japanese dining experience was complete.
feeling full and bloated with salt, we wandered some more. eventually we came across a cluster of small temples, including zendouji, myotenji, ankokuzan shofuku-ji (which was founded by elsai - who is given credit for bringing zen and tea to japan), tocho-ji (home of the largest wooden buddha in japan - it was so so beautiful), and mangyoji (which supposedly holds the grave of an 'unfortunate religious prostitute'.. lost in translation?). i realized i wasn't quite as mentally prepared as i thought for such an inundation of all things related to the buddha. and so quietly, i said a small prayer to myself, to allow myself to soak it all in with an open mind and an open heart.
on our way back towards the train station, we also stumbled upon kushida-jinja shrine, where - thanks to a friendly japanese woman - we were able to get our fortunes for 2010. all for only Y10 haha. i liked mine a lot, it was "very lucky - like blossoms in a vernal breeze". here are the highlights of mine:
--fortune: everything will go as you wish, you'll have a peaceful mind (i could use some of that..)
--wish: will be realized shortly (realizing my true wishes are evolving)
--travel: good (that is good!)
--relocation: you'll have many worries (like whether to stay in seattle?!)
--marriage: wait patiently for unexpected connection (HA!)
--employment: will be found with help of others (such as a recruiting agency)
jos wasn't overly thrilled with her plain "lucky". but either way, after we were done reading them we tied them to the designated stringed contraption, said our prayers and wishes, and moved on. me with an extra bounce in my step.
back at the train station, we figured out we could make FREE reservations for the bullet trains, and so away we went to hiroshima. the trains our JR passes allowed us to take were indeed bullet trains, but just not the super super super fast ones. still, i've never been on such a smooth, fast or more comfortable train ride. i can really get used to this. we realized at hiroshima station that we had to take another train to miyajima (where our hostel was) and so after a bit of confusion and question asking, we realized our JR passes also work on the local lines - score!
arrived and checked into our hostel (backpackers miyajima). was a bit nervous about the 20 bed dorm room - but it was split up into various sections of 4 beds each, so much more private than i was anticipating. the staff was very enthusiastic and loved to offer whatever knowledge they had. we set out again to find some dinner and though not much was open this late at night, we stumbled upon a small restaurant that actually happened to serve this regions specialty: okonomiyaki. we settled on the 'standard' and were presented with this noodle-cabbage-egg-veggies-pork thing all fried together into a pancake and served on a hot plate griddle in the middle of our table. yum.
i'm going to like japan.
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