Fukuoka (福岡市)

Having decided that the current trend of temperatures in the Osaka region were getting ridiculous, we jumped a Shinkansen heading a little closer to the equator. A few hours later, 5 degrees west and a whopping 1 degree closer to the equator, Fukuoka presented a more habitable temperature.

If you look carefully in the picture above, there are two signs (the one in the foreground and the long green one), showing the amount of bars you can package into the two buildings. This is achieved by making the bars correspondingly small (like smaller than you living room small).

A proper Ramen shop has a tendency to produce a lot of noise and show from the kitchen, regardless of how full the shop is, partly to actually make it seem fuller. But it's rather unusual to have one of the cooks coming to you halfway through the noodle soup and asking you quietly: "Where are you from?" He got his reply and we didn't hear from him again. Did we just give Australia a good name or a bad one?

Talking of unusual, having the Indiana Jones theme spontaneously blasting at you from surrounding speakers is definitely qualifying for the list, even if I weren't in Japan. But at least it had a very good water show synchronised to it.

And after the incident directly after entering the country, today was the second time that I rushed and ran to catch the very last train to home base.