Fukuoka

Update on the malware issue: I have had a couple of responses from PropellerAds but have no resolution yet; they say they are looking into it. Again, please email me if you see any suspicious activity on your credit cards and you believe it is because of the malware scam.

So last night's capsule hostel was interesting. The place was really clean and the hosts were very nice. The capsule itself wasn't a problem for me (I was worried about claustrophobia), but the beds themselves were really uncomfortable so that was a bummer. On the plus side Matt got some sleep (I gave him a Benadryl before bed and that did the trick) and he's feeling a bit better today.

We had toast and jam for breakfast this morning, compliments of our host. They had some unique jams and jellies which were really good. My favorite were the white peach and blueberry. Then we checked out and headed to the train station. It was another gorgeous sunny day there so it was a bit of a bummer to leave, especially since we knew we'd probably see rain in Fukuoka.

We arrived in Fukuoka a little over an hour later, but we sat in the train station for awhile since we couldn't check into our airbnb yet and didn't really know what else to do with our luggage. We found a comfy place to sit and watched an episode of Orange is the New Black until we got the message that we were good to check in. Our place is nice- it's a little more spacious than our last couple of places, the bed is on the floor as usual but it's a thicker mattress which is nice, it's got a small kitchenette and fully furnished, plus it's only 12 minute walk from the train station. We're here for two nights but I can't believe this is our last spot in Japan! 

We read that Fukuoka is famous for their street vendors, called yatais. We decided to try that for lunch so we went to an area, Nakasu Island, which we read had a lot of them, but when we got there it was all empty and then we realized it didn't start until 6pm. We were really hungry then so we just grabbed a quick bite of pasta at a nearby cafe. It was a really pretty area though with tulips and cherry blossoms along the water.

Then we walked to Maizura Park to see the castle ruins and cherry blossoms. All of the cherry blossoms are falling off the trees and it's so beautiful; it looks almost like snow falling down and piling on the ground. It started to rain right as we got to the top of the castle ruins so we grabbed a few quick photos and then left. We ducked under an umbrella and eventually found shelter at a nearby Starbucks, where we decided to try to wait it out until 6pm to potentially go back to the food trucks.

6pm came and it was still raining pretty good and therefore the food trucks probably wouldn't be very much fun, so instead we caught the subway back to the main train station, Hakata. It's a huge station with lots of things there so we just walked around until we found a place we wanted to eat. We settled on another fried skewer place, similar to what we had in Osaka. I had a couple of the same ones I had before (beef, onion, green pepper) and then I also tried garlic, which really wasn't very good. My grandma Pat would probably get sick just smelling it (she's allergic to garlic). The others were good though. Although I think they mislabeled the green pepper because mine were jalapeños. Super tasty but a bit spicier than I thought it was going to be. Matt declared that he'd rather try a fried cockroach than eat the peppers, though he did start to backtrack when I said I was going to put this in the blog.

That was our day! It was still raining with some distant thunder as we hustled back to our airbnb for the night. The storms change up our plans a bit but it is kind of nice to see a little spring thunderstorm.