Ramen Stadium in Canal City is located on the 5th floor. The Ramen Stadium has different ramen shops representing different kinds of ramen from all over Japan like the map shown below. It gives you the different ramens from different regions. We were there at around 7pm and it was not crowded at all.
We bought the Daifazu Yanagawa Kankou Ticket at Nishitetsu Tenjin Station. It costs 2,930 per person or about 1,300 pesos. I think it’s really worth it for 3 train tickets and a free Yanagawa canal tour especially in Japan. Yanagawa is about an hour away from Fukuoka. They just cut out parts of your ticket when you enter the station. Just check the schedules if you have a time that you set but trains in between are pretty regular. They have trains that leave every 30 minutes I think. The ticket includes the Yanagawa Canal Tour. It takes you around the town of Yanagawa via the canals. It’s actually called Yanagawa punting I think. The tour itself costs 1,600 yen so it’s a really good packaged deal.
We were at the Tenjin Underground Shopping complex window shopping when we saw this line in front of this really cool looking store. Whenever we see lines in Japan, it’s always a good sign. We’ve never been disappointed. So we check it out. It seems like they were just selling one product – it’s the Bake cheese tart.
According to the Bake Cheese Tart website, BAKE’s freshly baked cheese tarts have their origins in Kinotoya, a long-established Western confectionery store in Sapporo, Hokkaido. Their tarts started out as delectable chilled blueberry cheese tarts.
We can’t leave Fukuoka without having some katsu. 😀 We were at Tenjin Underground Shopping Complex and we ask the information desk if she can recommend any katsu restaurants in the area. She told us about Hamakatsu and another one but Hamakatsu won because it was closer to where we were at. We even passed it since it only had Japanese signage. We went on street level to see the signs pointing us down to Hamakatsu which is the restaurant we just passed. I think they’re pretty popular and it’s a national katsu restaurant chain with locations all over Japan. There’s even a few in Thailand.
Ohori Park is one of the major parks in Fukuoka. Ohori means large moat. The Fukuoka Castle ruins is also located near this park. If you ask about it, it would be better to say Ohorikoen. They recognize that more. Koen means park in Japanese. We went here since there were still Cherry Blossom trees in full bloom like the one pictured above. In most places, they have already fallen down.
Nokonoshima Island Park is an island off the city of Fukuoka. It is famous for its flowers that changes with the season. In Spring, it was full of cherry blossom, tulips and rape seed flowers. It is very accessible from the city and only takes maybe one hour to get there, depends what kind of transport you choose to travel with. We spent about half a day in this beautiful island taking lots of pictures. It was really pretty.
One of the first things we did in Fukuoka was to eat some delicious Hakata Ramen. We went on foot to find the yatai stalls near Canal City and Seryu Park. Hakata Ramen is a type of ramen, first derived from the Hakata region. It has a rich, milky, pork-bone tonkotsu broth and rather thin, non-curly and resilient noodles. Often, distinctive toppings such as crushed garlic, beni shoga (pickled ginger), sesame seeds, and spicy pickled mustard greens (karashi takana) are left on tables for customers to serve themselves. Ramen stalls in Hakata and Tenjin are well-known within Japan. Recent trends have made Hakata ramen one of the most popular types in Japan, and several chain restaurants specializing in Hakata ramen can be found all over the country. Source
For those wanting to know what we spent on this trip, this is my Japan Travel Budget. This is one of the cheapest trips I’ve been to considering it’s Japan. We spent 4 days and 3 nights in Fukuoka, Japan. We noticed that prices here are relatively cheaper than Tokyo. Maybe it also helps that the yen is at a good rate. 🙂 My Fukuoka Travel Budget for 3 days was around 15,000 pesos. This is probably one of the most inexpensive international trips I’ve been to.
Seiryu Park is a small park next to the river. It’s across the Canal City shopping complex and near the yatai stalls. This wasn’t on our itinerary but it was hard to miss since we passed by it. We spent a short time at the park taking pictures of the tulips around the park and along the canal. We also some Cherry Blossom trees in the park.
We got our tickets only two weeks before our trip and it was on sale. We had to wait for our two friends if they get the visa before booking anything. We’re really glad they did. It was a scramble then to find decent accommodation. We’re just glad that it wasn’t high season. Hotels were really expensive at the time of booking. The cheapest I could find was 5,000 pesos for a double room per night. So, I turned to looking for Airbnb in Fukuoka. We had a really good experience from our Airbnb in Tokyo last year. This was equally a pleasant experience.
