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Rainy season in Kyushu puts both the literal & figurative dampeners on Fukuoka. I’d love to go back, as I think it’s a lot cooler than my impressions from 2007 might have led me to believe.

Back then, though, there was a big festival on the way but all I got to see were snippets of preparations on my way to Fujisaki, a little subway station about ten minutes from my hotel, bearing wisteria in both its kanji & its station sign.

The station itself is located at the bottom of the Sawara ward civic center (sic), a nice grey building that doesn’t really say inspirational architecture, but we can’t all be supermodels.

Lunch is a steaming bowl of ramen at a ma and pa run joint that appears to operate from a converted living room. There are schoolboys at one table, a young business man at another and at the counter, there’s a guy in a polo shirt sitting next to a truck driver. Mr Polo shirt finishes his ramen and orders some more to take away, making me think that this place must be good. By the end of my lunch, expectations have met reality – but I don’t get any extra takeout.

Time to circle around and head back to the station, passing nothing of note except a view of Fukuoka Tower in the distance, a sight that makes me wonder why on earth everyone is so into building towers in Japan. In the thirteen years since, nothing much has changed. I still think Tokyo Tower has a garish paint job, although I have learned to appreciate its appeal. Sky Tree is just a boondoggle to me, although I probably should get around to visiting it since the views are supposedly spectacular; a fact which is apparently also true of the new Shibuya Scramble Square. Still though, do you really want to pay 2000 yen to ride an elevator?

Plenty of lovely mountains around with similarly spectacular views.

(My my, I have become curmudgeonly in my advancing years.)

FUJIS LEFT AT THE END OF JULY 8th, 2007 : 35/59