{"id":4622,"date":"2016-05-19T10:57:48","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T14:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/social.rollins.edu\/wpsites\/letters\/?p=4622"},"modified":"2019-07-22T14:07:53","modified_gmt":"2019-07-22T14:07:53","slug":"spring-break-fukuoka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/2016\/05\/19\/spring-break-fukuoka\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring Break – Fukuoka – Tonkotsu Ramen and Shrines"},"content":{"rendered":"

24th and 27th March<\/strong>
\nI had heard a lot about Fukuoka from my friend who lives there but it was not until I was there that I realized what he was talking about. First things first, I love food. My friend used to tell me that Fukuoka has the best food so I had to go. The best of it all, the tonkotsu Ramen there is what I was the most excited about.<\/p>\n

On my first night there, I arrived late having missed my train because I was so hungry on the connecting train that I had to go eat. But anyways, I managed to let the hostel let me check-in in the middle of the night so I got a place to stay that night. The plan was to stay there for a day and head to Hiroshima.<\/p>\n

The next day was pretty fun. I went to the places that my friend had recommended to go for Ramen. Ippudo, Ichiran, and Hakata were some of them. Apart from that I found another Ramen store at the coral city called the Ramen Stadium where I found the best Tonkotsu Ramen I’ve ever tasted and the best Tamago ever as well. Also, I made sure to try Mentaiko which is a vinegar fermented fish egg with an interesting taste.<\/p>\n

I got a map of the city from the hostel and wondered around on foot. The area around Hakata is divided into three areas with landmarks and sight-seeing places in close proximity \u2013 Hakata, Tenzin and Nakasu-Tenzin. In the afternoon, I wondered around the Hakata area. Close to the Torinji Temple I found a matcha tea place with a traditional outlook and a nice garden. Further down the road there was the Rakusuien Garden, Sumiyoshi Shrine, leading to Canal City. After a brief walk around the Canal City, which is a huge shopping complex, I went around the traditional district where I found Hakata Traditional Craft and Design Museum housing hundreds of lifelike dolls used in the ancient times. An interesting place for me was the Tochoji Temple where there is a huge wooden statue of Buddha. Also, at the Jotenji Temple I found out that Fukuoka is the birthplace of Udon and Soba noodles in Japan \u2013 priest Enni Ben\u2019en brought the techniques to prepare the noodles from china and was also the founder of the temple.<\/p>\n

An interesting thing in Fukuoka that I noticed is that there were a lot of Chinese and Korean tourists there. While I was wondering around searching for Ippudo ramen for dinner, I got lost so I asked someone, \u201cIppudo Ramen wa doko desu ka.\u201d The answer I got was, \u201cI am no Japanese,\u201d in a Korean ascent followed by, \u201cI will help you anyway so follow me.\u201d She took me to the Ramen place and I treated her for dinner and we hung out at a bridge close to Coral city where a guy was jamming really funky to his bass guitar using a looper. It was remarkable that it was a single guy playing it but it sounded like a whole band (because the looper lets you record and replay tracks).
\nI am definitely going back to Fukuoka again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

24th and 27th March I had heard a lot about Fukuoka from my friend who lives there but it was not until I was there that I realized what he was talking about. First things first, I love food. My friend used to tell me that Fukuoka has the best food so I had to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":512,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kansai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/512"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16551,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4622\/revisions\/16551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}