Momochi Beach Excursion

Momochi Beach

There are a number of organizations here dedicated to helping foreigners and exchange students.  So on Japan’s national holiday, Sports Day (yes, they all get a day off to play sports, want to move here yet?) we took a day excursion to Momochi Beach.  The area is a beautiful seaside area with a number of notable Fukuoka attractions including the Fukuoka City Library, The Fukuoka City Museum, Fukuoka Tower, a few radio and television broadcasting buildings and the beachfront.

The Trip and More Gaijin

We left Ijiri together and took the train into Tenjin (the main downtown center) and took a bus into Momochi Beach.  We all wore stupid looking blue name badges that immediately labeled us tourists although maybe the huge group of white people might have also given us away.  Led by a plump Japanese lady who held up a small white plastic ghost figurine on a stick, our first lesson of the day is that the bus systems are so confusing even our Japanese tour guides directed us onto the wrong bus.  Luckily they realized their mistake and we all boarded and got off before it took us to god-knows-where.  As we travelled, more blue name tagged foreigners got on at various stops and we found that there were about 2 or 3 other campus of foreigners joining us on this excursion.  I met many people but the one’s I remember the best are Moses from Nigeria, Karla from El Salvador, Chun Lei from China (sounds like Chung-li haha) and (a guy who’s name escapes me) from Iran.  I decided he might want to meet my friend Nima also from Iran and when I introduced them, they said one word to each other and suddenly hugged each other.  They were just ecstatic to find another Iranian in Japan (I guess that’s not an easy task).

Fukuoka City Museum

The Fukuoka City Museum (second from upper left) has some temporary exhibits but mostly serves as a permanent exhibition space for many of Fukuoka’s most historically significant artifacts.  We spent a total of 25 minutes in the museum because that’s all the tour allowed.  So at first we all ran through the exhibits thinking it was much too big to get through in 25 minutes.  We were wrong, it was more than enough time.  History is kind of boring.  At about 15 minutes, I had already briskly walked through all the exhibits and just took my time to go back to the ones I thought were interesting.

Next stop RKB/TNC Building

RKB and TNC are the radio and television broadcasting buildings for some of Fukuoka’s most popular programming.  The tour of RKB (radio something? building) was mainly confined to the lobby space.  There was not too much to see in the lobby save for the big pink pokemon they have for an official mascot.  It’s a mix of jigglypuff and clefairy? (Just below the picture of the Fukuoka City Museum or look for the big pink thing).  We got to see some celebrity DJ’s working in their studio and the sound managers in the back sitting at huge switch board tables.  It was a bit zoo like in that we swarmed in as a huge group, waved, took pictures and they just sat looking at us from behind a large pane of glass but it was alright.  I guess at least I got to see the Ryan Seacrest of Japan.

The TNC building was a bit more interesting.  There was no television studios on the tour which was what I kind of wanted to see but we got the next best thing… ROBOTS.  The TNC building is actually half shopping mall, exhibition space and television studio.  All the studios are located upstairs away from the public but downstairs there is a large robotics lab/store.  The picture that looks like a classroom where there are a bunch of kids is actually a robotics testing room where kids play and test out new robots.  Awesome right?  They just sit there and are all geniuses apparently because they assemble themselves robots and play with them, oh yeah, and they’re all probably 8-10 yrs old.  That’s Japan.

Fukuoka Tower

I’ve now seen two giant towers in the last month, Taipei 101 and Fukuoka Tower.  I can never compare the two but both were similar experiences.  A lot of upward-towards-the-sky pictures, cool looking design and a very sterile tourist feel at both places.  By the time we got to Fukuoka Tower we were tired from walking and spent the majority of our 45 minutes there just sitting and resting.  Ok, well, been there done that I guess.

Momochi Beach

Just a short walk from Fukuoka Tower, it is a beautiful beach.  I am from socal, so beautiful beaches aren’t all that impressive to me, but it was still nice to see the Pacific Ocean from the other side.  There are also strange pier buildings that are very western looking and came off looking very plastic and fake.  Apparently there are also some western cathedrals that look very out of place here in Japan that Batiste has seen but at least I know there’s a cathedral in Fukuoka if I ever need one.  We stood on the beach for about half an hour.  Mingled with the other folks from other campuses, took some group pictures and parted ways.

Tenjin and REAL Hakata Ramen

At first we all wanted to stay to explore but feelings the pangs of hunger, we were convinced by ourselves and our new Japanese friend Mio to go to Tenjin to eat ramen instead.  Mio lives in Hakata and frequently goes into Tenjin to eat and party and knows all the best places to eat.  So she takes us to the most popular ramen restaurant in Tenjin called roughly in Romanji, “Ippudo”.  For pictures and description of food, see “First Supper” post.  But in short, it was amazing and I just found out the other night that it is open past 2 AM.  I walked by the shop and there were still many people eating ramen at 2 in the morning.  I’m not sure when it closes, if at all, but I was seriously tempted to eat a bowl of ramen at 2 AM.