Oh boy. I met a rugby ref from Albuquerque who was originally from Australia and we watched the rugby game together. Once again I’m going to be posting later in the day/morning because I stayed out too late.

I started out the day pretty simply, at the Pronto across the street. I like these easy breakfasts.

I went to the tourist bureau (at the station, as expected) to ask what I should see and they told me Dazaifu. That wasn’t on the web sites but it looked interesting so I got on the 40 minute bus ride to Dazaifu. It sounded like just another shrine, but there was a museum nearby and that sounded interesting.

I wanted to do the shrine thing so I had to line up behind a whole high school’s worth of kids. I overheard one of the boys and he said he was going to wish for a girlfriend. I should’ve told him it hasn’t worked for me so he might want to reconsider especially since Dazaifu is traditionally where you pray for academic success.

Behind the shrine was a Inari shrine. I forgot what the Inari shrine was supposed to deify, but I started to think Inari was the god of staircases.

Two interesting features: instead of one bell, there were 12 bells for each sign of the Chinese zodiac, plus the main bell.

There was a cave behind the shrine as well, something I’ve seen once before.

  

I went by the “waterfall” that was barely a trickle.

Then it was museum time. The first museum I went to held the treasures of the shrine.

Then I followed signs to the Kyushu National museum, which I figured out might be a big deal on the way. First, there’s two escalators to take you up a mountain.

Then there’s two people movers to get you to the museum.

When you finally get there, the building is HUGE.

I doubt this Miyoshi can move. It looks awfully top-heavy.

I went to the regular exhibit floor where they had the standard history of Japan stuff. There was a special exhibit from the 3rd century in China. I also went to the third museum that showed history with Hakata dolls but I just sped through that.

Here’s all I had for lunch. Ume and matcha soft ice cream. It wasn’t great.

I went back to my room and booked my tickets for Hokkaido and my trip to see the easternmost point of Japan at Cape Nosappu near the end of October. I was just taking it easy until the night market started.

The night market was mostly international food and some people I talked to told me to go to the traditional yatai instead and the yatai weren’t far away.

I walked around until I found a place that was crowded and had tonkotsu ramen and teba gyoza. The gyoza was stuffed into the chicken wing!

Sadly, it wasn’t the best ramen I’ve had on this trip. In fact, I think I liked the ramen I had at the street fair in Sapporo better. But it wasn’t expensive.

I went on to a yakitori place and it cost twice as much as the ramen. It wasn’t twice as good. That’s where I met the guy from Albuquerque who wanted to watch rugby and I told him I knew a place. We ended up talking for a while and having a couple more beers. Just enough to keep me from being able to finish this post last night.