January 16, 2024

Today we decided to visit Fukuoka which is the further west we will go on this trip in Japan.

We found Fukuoka because I misspelled the city I was looking forward. When we go to a city I have been grabbing sites that talk about the top XX things to do in a place. I find it gives us a quick overview. Lots of places have the same thing. Go to some temples/shrines, ride in a rickshaw, dress up in a kimono, and walk around the shopping street. However, you get some gems and this one was pretty good – Top things to do in Fukuoka. While the otter cafe caught our eye we actually zoomed in on the Buddha. It seemed amazing.

Now, this is about 180 miles from us and would normally be a 4 hour drive. However, we hopped on the Shinkansen and were there in an hour…that was awesome. We did have another twenty minutes on the local train.

After the train ride, we walked across the street to the temple and up to the Buddha statue.

As we came around to the front of the statue it was amazing and totally worth the trip. At 137’ long it was more impressive in person than the pictures.

The Buddha is teaching the final lesson and free of the cares of the world. It was amazing to see and just a really up lifting experience.

Overall we had a great visit and it was well worth the trip. We also got to see a Buddha on the weigh in and it seems people rub his belly…at least we think so.

We did see a couple of other cool statues around the temple.

Once we were done it was back to the train and off to Miyajima.

Miyajima is an island off of Hiroshima. We had to get to the ferry station and take it to the island.

On the way we were able to see the Grand Torii Gate floating in the high tide.

We then took a different ferry back to the Peace Park. We got to go through the harbor and up the river.

Now, we have a had a lot of different types of food during this trip but one type still remained. When I took my first European trip I learned that you need to eat this food in every country – McDonalds.

As we stood inline, a women approached Owen. She noted that she barely came up to his waist. This small and old woman looks up at Owen and says, “Jumbo, Jumbo” and just starts laughing. She motions about how short she is and laughs some more. It was really funny.

We enjoyed the meal and are ready to start the trip back to Tokyo and on to home. So we watch the sunset and say goodbye to Hiroshima.