Lovely Fukuoka...thanks Ylva!

First of all I would like to thank Ylva for meantioning Fukuoka/Hakata (same city really but usually the name differs depending on which side of teh river you're at, west is Fukuoka and east is Hakata). If you hadn't we would never have stopped here. We really enjoyed the city and the sun :o)

I just have to show the really smart mirror we have had in both our first and second hotel room. One square of the mirror never gets covered by moist from showering. Great stuff.
We had a slow morning and didn't leave the hotel until 10 AM. Our first stop was the train station to leave our bags and the second stop was Starbucks for breakfast :o) We then headed to the Ohori park and Fukuoka castle in the western part of the city. What a beautiful place, especially in the sunshine and abcense of other people.


The park also has many different sport fields. This empty tennis court is for you Mike!


Toilets are free everywhere in Japan and most of the time you can find western styled ones...but not in this park. I had to use one of the traditional toilets for the first time. It's more than a hole in the ground. You can flush!


There isn't a lot left of the castle except the walls.


But from the view from the highest point was great. We even saw snow on the mountain tops.


And we managed to read the Yahoo Dome on this sport arena.


Very sunny!



Can you see the air plane? I guess the airport is even closer to Fukuoka/Hakata than Bromma is to Stockholm.


A lot of workers were working hard trying to keep the stone walls in shape.


On our way down to the lake that is covering the western part of the park we found this beautiful path with a homeless man's tent on the right side.


View of the Ohori lake with the city in the background.


Starbucks had a great view of the lake and was the only coffee place we could find around the lake.

A lot of restaurants in Japan use food samples to show the different dishes that the serve. They usually look quite real. Here is a picture showing what it can look like. Rickard and I bought a beer glas like the one you can see to the left in the picture.


Rickard is hiding in the pavilion...


More sunny pictures!


After the park we went to Nakasu, the amusement district of the city, for the best noodles in Japan. We found a place where it said on the sign "English can be used in our noodles restaurant. Please feel free to come in". How can you resist visiting a place like that? I don't know how true the sign was but at least we managed to order some really good noodles!


The restaurant was very private. You couldn't see the neighbour eating or the staff of the restaurant.


And you had your own water tap in the stall.



Apparently you are supposed to enjoy your noodles from one of those carts, but they are only opened in the evenings so we missed out on that.


After lunch we went to Canal City, a very big mall with both a Disney store and a Barbie store as well as a Hello Kitty store.


And of course, it also had a Moomin store and Moomin coffee place where you could have coffee with Moomin sitting beside you. For the Canadians reading this. Moomin is a Finnish childrens books character that is very popular in Japan.



After another visit to Starbucks, only to by our 9th mug, we took the train to Hiroshima. In Hiroshima we found a good picture of how vertical space is being used in Japan. It's not uncommon for cars or bikes being parked on top of each other as well as stores and restaurants being found on all kinds of differents levels in narrow buidlings.


We're staying at another Dormy Inn hotel (we stayed at Dormy Inn in Nagasaki) for our stay in Hiroshima. My sister Helena and her family stayed here when they visited Hiroshima 2 years ago. They thought it was great, but compared to our last 2 hotels we are not too impressed. The standard is lower and the view is the wall of another buidling a meter away from our window. But it was cheap and breakfast is included :o)


We went to a family restaurant on the basement floor of the neighbouring building to the hotel. We had some trouble ordering (for the first time since we arrived), but managed to get beer and to enjoy shabbu shabbu, kind of like fondue but where you put everything (fish, meat, chicken, sallad, mushrooms) in a big bowl on top of a small gas burner on the table and then pick out what you want with chop sticks.


We have now enjoyed bear and snacks in the hotel. The plan is to go to Miyajima island tomorrow, a sacred island where you're not allowed to die or give birth apparently. More info about that another day!