Month: April 2025

“Knock, knock.”  “Who’s there?”  “Adam.”  “Adam who?”  “Atom Bomb.”  I remember I was around four or five when my mother told me this joke.  Later, when I was growing up in Los Alamos, my friends used to kid around about living in a city of bomb makers.  But Oppenheimer and the scientists who built the atomic bomb left a weird legacy of…

We’ve moved on to Hiroshima. Here are some last photos of Fukuoka.

The Fukuoka Prefecture Art Museum advertised itself as a place where local artists could show their stuff. From the exhibition on the first level, it seemed like a place where community art classes could exhibit their progress. Couldn’t resist taking a photo of this photo. How cute is this feathered creature? Moving to a room…

Ohori Park has large pond that once was part of the moat system of Fukuoka Castle. It has gardens, and playing fields, and landscaped groves of peach, plum, and cherry trees.  The peach and cherry trees were still in bloom. The ruins of Fukuoka Castle still retain some of the slanted stone ramparts. And a towering…

some signs we encountered today in Fukuoka

Dazaifu. Japan’s most famous Starbucks

Today we decided to take another trip out of Fukuoka and see the Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine.  It was a thirty minute train ride to Dazaifu where the shrine takes up enough mountainside acreage to include an amusement park and a mall-size modern museum.  The street from the train station to the shrine gate was lined with shops…

I lost my sunglasses a few days ago (cheap ones) and have been trying to find sunglasses to buy ever since. In the US, seems every corner Walgreens and CVS has a rack of them. Not here. In Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu, in Japan. Sunglasses = yakuza (the evil Japanese crime syndicate so…

Lunch 2 days ago. Total = $14.00 Lunch yesterday. Total is $43.00 Lunch today. Total is $25.00

Load of wash accomplished. This apartment in Fukuoka comes with a washing machine but no dryer. Not uncommon anywhere we’ve traveled (lack of dryer).  Lack of dryer necessitates draping the damp clothes over every available surface and hoping they will dry in a day or two. Sometimes I get desperate and use a hair dryer…

At the General Head Temple of Sasaguri Shikoku in Nanzoin. The setting on the mountain was tranquil and beautiful. Read Grubb’s post “Nirvana” for context. I am enthralled with the “maneki-neko” (beckoning cat) which are believed to bring good luck and fortune.

After taking our train trip to Nirvana, we returned to Fukuoka to search out the Tocho-ji Temple.  It sits, like the Little Temple That Could, squat among modern high rises in the middle of the city. Founded in 806 AD by the Buddhist monk Kukai, the temple is over 1200 years old. Enshrined near the temple…

This morning a thirty minute train ride from the Hakata station in Fukuoka took us into the hills of Nanzoin where we hiked across a bridge to the General Head Temple of Sasaguri Shikoku.  “Melody Bridge” had metal strips set apart and a mallet to play them like a xylophone as you crossed. The temple was…

Every July in Fukuoka the Hakata Gion Yamakasa festival is celebrated with towering floats (yamakasa) weighing up to one ton being hoisted by guys dressed in breechcloths racing around the city.  The festival is 770 years old and is believed to have been started when a monk had himself carried throughout the town praying in an…

Shinkansen might be fast but when you are in tunnels most of the time, it begins to feel a bit claustrophobic. I wondered why so many tunnels. See Google AI’s answer below. That “tunnel boom” is real! “Japan’s mountainous terrain and the need for high-speed, efficient rail travel led to the extensive use of tunnels…