fukuoka
pre-blog note: i enabled comments on the blog. i don’t really see this being used, but i discovered this website builder has that ability, so i turned it on. i don’t get much control over what this looks like (i hate that it has capital letters), so just as a heads up, when it asks for name/email/website, you don’t actually have to give the email or website, you can just put anything in the name section and click “comment as guest”.
i’ve decided i am going to combine the posts for the 14th and 15th. i took very few photos on the 14th because it was pouring rain, and while i didn’t take a ton of photos on the 15th, nearly all of them came out incredible. the photos from the 15th are finally really showing off the power of the new lens i bought a couple weeks ago. being able to go down to f1.4 really makes a massive difference in night photography, and you can really see it. i am not a professional, and rarely talk myself up about anything, but i got some really incredible shots of fukuoka nightlife.
because of this, i also put a ton more work into the editing process, using n ai denoising tool on many of the shots. my laptop is not incredibly powerful, so it takes 5-10 minutes to denoise a single photo. it also turns my laptop into a very toasty loud paperweight while it is doing so. so a lot of this blog post’s writing time was spent sitting cozily in front of my laptop as i listened to it clinging on for dear life, begging for death while i made it run 40 marathons.
if anyone wants an explanation of what denoising is,
original image:
this example is heavily zoomed in to exaggerate its effectiveness, but that is what i am doing.
the journey
i woke up to a knock on the hotel room door. apparently, my reservation included breakfast being brought to me in my room. this was news to me. but quite welcome, regardless.
this was… interesting. the rice was good, and about half the things in the box were good. i dont know what most of it even was. shoutout no known allergies, i guess. on that note, there was also miso soup with oysters in it, they provided the bowl with the oysters and veggies and a thermos full of miso soup separately. i took the oysters out, because i am like 15% sure i may have an allergy to oysters. one of our first nights in japan, we got shabu shabu and one of the sections had oyster in it. i developed a very annoying rash on both of my hands the next day, and i have no idea what caused it. but the oysters were the only thing that was abnormal. so i have been operating on the assumption that i may be allergic to oyster. i kinda doubt it, but i really dont want the rashes to come back. so i took the oysters out.
doesnt help that i am currently in a region of japan that is world renowned for oysters.
breakfast done, i took the shuttle to the station that i would have loved to know about on the way to the hotel, took the ferry back, and headed towards hiroshima station.
the journey to the station was kinda scary, because i just immediately got on a train that said it was headed there. i didnt think to check how long that journey was, and after about 20 minutes i realized that it does eventually get there, but makes 30 stops along the way. if i had stayed on this train i would have missed my bullet train to fukuoka. so i got off the train and called a cab. made it with only a little time to spare. but thankfully i have mostly figured out the shinkansen process. now that i am able to buy the tickets online (not sure if i ever posted that i figured out a way to do this finally), i just have to show up at the station and use a very simple machine to print the tickets out and head to my platform.
quite lucky for me, it immediately started pouring rain like 3 seconds after i got on the train. so i dodged all of it during my journey today. this is the trip today:
after a pretty uneventful train ride, i arrived in fukuoka. it was still pouring rain, so i took one photo and put the camera away for the day.
i also went into the lawson right next to the station and bought an umbrella. my goal was to make it through the trip without needing one, but i failed here. it wont fit in my suitcase, though, so i dont know what i am going to do about that when it comes time to leave.
my camera may be weatherproofed, but my lens isnt getting dirtyproof. so i decided id rather just head straight to the hotel and crash anyways. i stayed up extremely late the night before getting my money’s worth out of taking an additional bath in the fancy open air bath, and was running on like 5 hours of sleep.
i woke up later that night and went for a walk, but it was still pouring, so i didnt bring the camera.
tea???
i slept in very late, and was awoken at 11am by a knock on the hotel door. did not expect 2 days in a row of being woken up by knocking on the door, but here we are. apparently this hotel brings you tea and snacks on your first day staying here.
so first off, this is clearly for 2 people. the hotel is obviously aware that i am a single person in this room. i dont know why they brought tea and snacks for two, but they did.
nearly all of these snacks were really bad. i tried everything but ultimately did not like basically any of it. i hate how wasteful it is to throw it all away, but i found a lot of them to be inedible. plus, i am in a city known for incredible street food. i am not about to fill up on kinda gross snacks.
they all looked good though. so at least they did something right.
nightlife
i am posting things kinda out of order here, but i thought it would make more sense to do it this way than it would to sprinkle in the photos of fukuoka amongst the other things. so i am going to put all of my shots of the city at night in one place instead.
this city is kinda fascinating. a thriving nightlife means a lot of things. food stalls everywhere, business open late, and also… lots and lots and lots of prostitution. it isn’t like osaka where theres a couple people on the street that come up to you and try to force you to look at their google translate selling whatever, this place operates completely differently. all over the place there are businesses called soaplands (look it up, not going into it in this post, lol). but in addition to that, i saw probably 40 or 50 women with laminated signs around their necks that had several languages just saying like “20,000 yen 60 mins sexy time with me”. they aren’t pushy, they arent trying to stop you and convince you. they are just kinda there walking around. and they are everywhere. i wasn’t in like a seedy area or anything. just like the regular city downtown has them everywhere. its kinda fascinating.
i think this kind of thing being legal is better than how it is in the states. obviously there’s going to be a kind of puritanical resistance to the idea, but if it is legalized, that means tax money from it, sex traffickers go away, and likely regulations involving std testing and more safety for the woman who is choosing to do it. it is literally better in every way for it to be above board, because the world’s oldest profession isn’t going to go away if you make it illegal. people are still gonna do it. make it safer for everyone.
anyway i just found it kind of interesting that it is just kinda omnipresent here. its not in your face or aggressive, but if you came here looking for it, it would be incredibly easy to find.
yatai
i stayed in the room for most of the daylight hours, since fukuoka is known for it’s vibrant nightlife. i knew i wanted to go out and get some night photography, eat at yatai food stalls, and see fukuoka in its prime.
so yatai food stalls, this is something fukuoka is famous for. it translates to “shop stand”, and its basically a small mobile restaurant. not like a food truck, its more like a giant wheelbarrow that unfolds into a restaurant. the following image is not mine, but this is an idea of what they look like in transit:
image from “japanese food craftsman” on youtube.
these usually sit 5 or so people, with a few bigger ones having seats for up to 10. they usually sell things like ramen, gyoza, soba, and tempura. street food. they also pretty commonly serve alcohol. there is a street extremely close to my hotel that is full of these yatai. my hotel is on one side of the river, and the yatai are visible right across it.
i got one extremely good photo of this street. couldn’t decide on the edit i liked, so i just made 2 versions. i think one of these will end up the best photo of the trip. the one on the right feels very bladerunner to me.
i went to one and ordered ramen. i have eaten ramen a lot in japan, and this is probably the best ramen i have ever had (spicy ramen in nara was really good, it is hard to decide). it was very simple, just a piece of pork and some green onions. but it was unbelievably good food. and it was also 600 yen. thats $4.
kohta
i was walking around after eating my dinner and heard a guy playing guitar. i stopped and listened to him for a while. he started talking to me in absolutely perfect english. his name is kohta, and hes 55 years old. been playing guitar since he was 10. he stops people walking by and asks them to name any song or artist, and then starts playing it. i was kinda blown away at how many songs he was able to summon up. i hung out and talked with him / listened to him playing guitar for like 90 minutes.
kohta has a youtube channel. please check it out. this guy is the one of nicest people i have ever met, and hes pretty good at guitar. i also recorded a few songs he played from my phone. i don’t know what the first song is. but i definitely know the second, and the third was one i requested. if you can name the third song (its pretty popular, i am not being a hipster here) you are officially cool.
thats the post!
じゃあまたね!
