🇯🇵 2023 Winter Fukuoka - Yanagawa and Dazaifu

When I was booking my trip back to Taiwan for Christmas, I was also thinking of visiting Japan with my sister since I hadn't been there for a while. I told my mum the dates I would like to be in Japan and asked her to help sort out the ticket because she had all the power and magic with mileage. She came back a week later and told me, "Oh, I've booked flights for you already, you will fly to Fukuoka and fly back from Tokyo. I think it will be nice since you haven't been to Fukuoka." I was shocked because my mum had forgotten the fact that Japan is quite a long country. From Fukuoka to Tokyo, it will take five hours by fast train and one hour by domestic flight.

But anyway, the destinations of this Japan trip will be "Fukuoka and Tokyo". It's like earth and heaven, north and south. In short, they are far apart.

The start of our trip is a bit bumpy. We ordered e-sim online and were about to set it up at the airport in Taiwan, but our phones don't have the e-sim function because we bought them from Hong Kong. In the end, we bought the data roaming deal from a Taiwanese telecom provider. Thinking back, we were quite lucky that we tried out the e-sim setup in Taiwan before boarding, or else I would freak out when we landed.

We took the metro to Hakata (博多), where we will stay for the next few days. After settling in the hotel, my sister said, "Let's go to Nakasu-Kawabata (中州川端) first." She told me that it is like a red light district and I was all excited by her words. In the end, Nakasu-Kawabata is just like a market area. I was a bit disappointed at first but was quickly satisfied by the mochi we found at the market.

After the market, we visited Kushida Shrine (櫛田神社) and prayed for a smooth journey ahead. In Japan, you can get a seal stamp, called Goshuin (御朱印) after visiting and praying to God at the shrine. I started collecting Goshuins in 2017. You can get a dedicated notebook in almost every shrine in Japan to collect the stamps. It was almost new year, so the shrine had many decorations and ceremony equipment laid out.

We didn't plan much for our first day. After visiting the shrine, we went to a shopping mall to buy gear for our ski day.

The next day, we woke up early in the morning to get to Yanagawa (柳川). For transportation on the day, we bought the "Dazaifu & Yanagawa Sightseeing Ticket Pack" Nishitetsu. Japan has lots of these travel ticket packs for tourists, but I have to admit that I didn't really understand them that well and was relying on my sister's knowledge. There's a shuttle bus included in the ticket pack to take us from Yanagawa train station to the punting place. When we got on the boat, the punter asked in English, "Does anyone speak Japanese?" Total silence. You'd thought that he would do the tour in English, but no he spoke Japanese the whole way with some bits of English vocabulary. Thanks to the Japanese drama I watched, I could more or less guess what he was saying. Although I couldn't understand much, I still enjoyed the tour and his singing during the punt.

Punting in Yanagawa is quite different from Cambridge. The river was very quiet and there were no self-punting tourists going in circles. In Yanagawa, you see some plain but beautiful old Japanese houses, which feel quite different from the grand colleges in Cambridge. I think both are beautiful in their own ways. After punting, we went to have some eel rice, which is the most famous dish in Yanagawa. The restaurant we went to served really nice eel rice and it also had a discount code with the ticket pack at the time we visited.

We took the train to Dazaifu (太宰府) after lunch. Dazaifu was my favourite place during the trip. I like it even more than Kawagoe (川越), which is also called Little Edo (the old name of Tokyo) for its historical buildings. We had the kimono experience, the traditional Japanese garment, in Kawagoe, but I think Dazaifu could be a good place for this experience as well.

There's no need for Google map when you get off the train in Dazaifu, just follow the old street outside the station and the crowd walking toward Dazaifu Tenmangu (太宰府天滿宮). We had two goals in Dazaifu, the first was to have the mochi rice cake with red bean paste, and the second was to pray for my sister to graduate from her PhD.

The ticket pack had a discount code for the mochi rice cake, so we got one each and sat outside the shop to finish it. My sister said, "Do you know that mum had loads of mochi rice cake when they visited Dazaifu?" I said, "Well, not surprised. This tastes like something she likes." As for how many mochi rice cakes me and my sister had and how many we bought back... I can only say that 'like mother, like daughter'.

Outside Dazaifu Tenmangu, there's a bull statue. People say that if you touch its horn/head, you will become smarter and have a smooth academic year. Needless to say, my sister touched it with sincere wishes to graduate soon. There's also a bridge before entering the shrine. I overheard someone say that you can't turn your head when crossing the bridge, or else it means that you will live in your past and not move forward with life. After visiting the shrine, I got one normal Goshuin and one New Year edition for my friend who was preparing for her medical school entry exam.

Me and my sister decided to have some more mochi rice cake before we left Dazaifu. With a mochi rice cake and a cup of matcha in hand, I realised I was really in Japan and it was not a dream.