On Thursday morning we hopped back on the Shinkansen to go a few hours southwest to Fukuoka, a city on the island of Kyushu. This place is quite a bit off the normal tourist path, but we made the journey for one reason: sumo! We were interested in seeing sumo while in Japan and there happened to be a country-wide tournament going on in Fukuoka. Since we were armed with unlimited rail passes, we decided to be adventurous.
After a lovely train ride, we arrived in Fukuoka in the early afternoon. Our hotel was just a few blocks away, conveniently located near many shrines and also on the way to the sumo tournament. We stayed at a very old, traditional-style guesthouse called Kashima Honkan. It was sort of like a hostel, with shared bathroom facilities and pretty bare-bones amenities, but the historic aspect was cool.
After checking in, we walked down to the sumo tournament venue and took our seats. We made it for the last two hours of the day-long matches, which features the best wrestlers in the country (though I have no idea how to judge that). The matches themselves are incredibly brief, but have a lot of ceremony and intimidation tactics involved. A man sings the names (chosen by the wrestlers) of the competitors, followed by lots of circling and slapping and squatting. Then, the wrestlers run at each other and grapple for a few moments before one falls down or exits the ring. It was surprisingly exciting!
Afterwards, we went out into the city in search of food. This was somewhat challenging, since this is definitely not a city that caters to English-speaking tourists. And of course, we managed to walk through the red light district. We eventually would up at a big shopping complex called Canal City, which contained an area called "Ramen Stadium." Fukuoka is the birthplace of tonkotsu-style ramen (and the aforementioned Ichiran franchise) and this food court was devoted entirely to this food item. We each chose a different restaurant, which allowed us to compare the many different ways of preparing this soup. So yummy!
The next morning, I forced the boys to wake up super early to enjoy a huge traditional breakfast prepared by the guesthouse:
Bryan decided to enjoy the traditional Japanese baths at the ryokan while Tommy and I went out to look at some nearby temples. This was a very different experience from the temple-hopping we had done in Kyoto, since there are hardly any tourists. The only tourists appeared to be "religious" tourists from around Japan. The first temple we stopped at had a number of very nice buildings, though they appear to be modern (still in a traditional style):
This temple includes a giant wooden buddha (no pictures allowed) which was quite a sight to behold. You can also go under the buddha to see some odd artwork and then walk through a completely dark path to get out. I'm sure there is some spiritual significance to it that we're unaware of, but it was still really cool. We walked over to a temple called Shofukuji, which has the distinction of being the oldest zen temple in Japan. The grounds were completely empty and very pretty:
It was time to get on our train to Hiroshima at this point, so we packed up and got back on the Shinkansen. We arrived in Hiroshima an hour later and headed straight to the Peace Park. The park was very beautiful but also incredibly eerie, as it contains some of the only ruins left from the atomic bomb detonation. Most buildings at the time were wooden and thus instantly destroyed, but this structure still stands:
The park also holds the Children's Peace Monument, devoted to the thousands of children killed by the bomb and radiation. This is surrounded by cases filled with thousands and thousands of colorful paper cranes:
We visited the museum, which was an interesting and depressing experience. It definitely makes the US look very bad while skirting around the atrocities committed by Japan at the time, but history is always going to be biased. We soon had to head back to Tokyo and grabbed some Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki on the way (no pictures, because we were hungry and in a hurry!).
After a very long train ride, we arrived in Tokyo and checked in at our new hotel in Ikebukuro. This area is very lively, particularly at night. After a very confusing experience of trying to navigate a giant department store and riding the most crowded elevator I've ever been in, we got ourselves some delicious curry udon for dinner. I really wish I had taken more pictures of food! It's been a while at this point, so I honestly can't remember if we did anything else that night. If I remember I'll include it in the final post!
