I travelled solo from Fukuoka to Tokyo via Osaka, Morioka, Sendai and several day trips between 18 October and 5 November. This was my third trip to Japan, and followed on directly from about two weeks in South Korea.
I’m an Australian, and my interests include art, history, architecture and (for shopping purposes) men’s vintage clothes and shoes.
Overall, it was an excellent trip – I revisited several cities I’ve enjoyed on previous trips and still liked them and discovered some interesting new cities.
**Busan to Fukuoka**
I took the Beetle ferry from Busan to Fukuoka. The Busan ferry terminal is very efficient, and the ferry was comfortable and fast. The ferry departed on time and arrived at the Hakata ferry terminal 15 minutes late at about 7 pm.
Unfortunately arrangements at the terminal were pretty bad. While it took only about half an hour to pass through immigration and customs, all the shops in the ferry terminal were closed, there were no ATMs and no machine to charge IC cards. There was also a long line at the taxi rank, with no taxis turning up. Fortunately I had some small denomination notes from a previous trip to Japan, so I was able to catch a bus to Hakata station – if I hadn’t had this I would have had to walk to the nearest Seven-Eleven a few blocks away to withdraw cash to pay for the bus. Given public transport in Japan is usually excellent, it’s bizarre that the ferry terminal is so lacking in basic services.
**Fukuoka, with day trips to Kumamoto and Nanzion (18-22 October)**
This was my second visit to Fukuoka, which is one of my favourite cities in Japan. I visited the Hakozakigu shrine, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka City Museum and Fukuoka Art Museum. The Art Museum was the highlight here – it has an amazing collection. I also spent a really interesting afternoon going through the vintage and modern clothing shop district to the west of Tenjin.
I also made two day trips to Kumamoto and Nanzion temple. Kumamoto was really hot, and I only visited the castle – I found it disappointing, as it’s a concrete reconstruction and the displays inside it weren’t interesting. Nanzion was more interesting, as the giant Buddha statue is great and the temple complex is fascinating.
**Osaka (22-25 October)**
This was my third visit to Osaka, which is a city I also really like. I visited the Abeno Harukas Art Museum, Shi-Tennoji Temple, Osaka Museum of Housing and Living (which I didn’t realise includes a recreation of a historic Osaka neighbourhood on the top floor of a 10 story building!) and Osaka Aquarium. The Aquarium was particularly great – as a tip, buy tickets ahead of time online, as the lines are very long and the aquarium has timed entry (I bought my ticket on my phone when I arrived, and had to kill an hour in the depressing tourist trap mall next to the aquarium).
I also spent the best part of a day clothes shopping in the Orange Street area and the shops to the north of Amerikamura – I really recommend the Orange Street area in particular, which deserves to be much better known.
**Morioka, with a day trip to Kakunodate (25-28 October)**
I visited Morioka as it looked like a good base for visiting Kakunodate, was rated as one of the best places to visit in 2023 by the New York Times and I was interested in seeing a small Japanese city. I really liked the place: there’s quite a lot to see, and it’s slower paced and much more accessible than the big cities. The highlight was the excellent Iwate Museum of Art, which currently has a great exhibition on the career of the Studio Ghibli director Isao Takahata. The remnants of the castle, Sakurayama Shrine and Morioka History and Culture Museum were also worthwhile – the museum is worth visiting for it’s shop alone. The city also has some very good restaurants.
Kakunodate made a good day trip. I hadn’t bought a Shinkansen ticket ahead of time, and the only option in the morning was a standing ticket – standing for the 50 minute trip wasn’t much fun. Happily I was able to get a window seat on the return trip, which had great views. I visited several samurai houses in Kakunodate, which were all well presented. I wanted to visit the castle ruins, but they were closed due to a recent bear attack! Options for lunch were fairly limited, and I ended up having convenience store sandwiches.
**Sendai (28-31 October)**
While in Sendai I visited the Sendai Mediatheque (disappointing: it’s really a large community arts centre), Hachiman Shrine, Rinnoji Shrine, Aoba Shrine, Zuihōden Temple and castle remnants. The Zuihōden Temple was the highlight and the castle the low light – it’s a tourist trap, with little remaining. I spoiled myself by staying at the Westin Hotel, which was fantastic and well worth the price.
I was planning on doing day trips to Yamadera and/or Hiraizumi, but after 3 weeks on my feet each day I was too tired. I instead visited Matsushima, and enjoyed a cruise on the bay there (though the view is rather spoilt at times by a giant power station and ugly port facilities – the Japanese aren’t great at preserving their historic vistas).
**Tokyo (31 October – 5 November)**
This was my fourth visit to Tokyo (I visited twice on my first trip to Japan), and I targeted a mix of places I hadn’t previously seen and some I wanted to see again. I visited a lot of art galleries, including the Mori Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (which featured an incredibly popular David Hockney exhibition), Artizon Museum, Tokyo Station Gallery, Intermediatheque (which I thought was a bit odd), National Art Center (which had some fantastic exhibitions on) and Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. I also visited the excellent Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum, which features a diverse range of preserved buildings, and the Meiji University Museum which has a very interesting collection and is located in Tokyo’s guitar shop district!
I spent about a day and a half worth of time shopping. This included an afternoon in Shinjuku, an afternoon in Kōenji and Nakano (where I stupidly wasted time visiting Nakano Broadway, despite having disliked in on a previous visit: I still disliked it, especially as I visited this time on the afternoon of a public holiday, when it was packed) and an afternoon in the Ginza. A lesson learned is to do more research ahead of time about where to visit, as there are a vast number of really interesting and well presented shops in each of these areas.
Another highlight was attending a classical music concert at Suntory Hall. It had fantastic acoustics, and the retired Emperor was in attendance!
I departed Japan via Haneda Airport. The departure process was the fastest of any airport I’ve visited – it only took 10 minutes to pass through security, immigration and customs after dropping off my bag!
**Random observations**
* Most places I went were very busy with domestic tourists. It was explained to me that October is a peak month for travel, and this October was particularly busy due to warmer than normal weather and pent up demand from the pandemic period. Weekends were particularly busy, with some places being very unpleasant to visit due to crowding.
* Only a smallish minority of Japanese people seem to routinely wear face masks now. Most people on crowded subway trains wore masks (as did I), but few did so on the Shinkansen, uncrowded subway trains or indoors in other locations.
* The quality of food is very high. I didn’t visit any famous restaurants or cafes, and had great meals in most places I picked based on Google views and/or convenience.
* Japanese pasta was particularly interesting and enjoyable. The highlight was the sizzling tomato pasta I accidentally ordered in Fukuoka (it came with a candle under the pan to keep it sizzling!).
* I was interested to find that the cafes that lots of tourists like to visit in Japan are essentially the Japanese version of the Australian-style cafes that are becoming common worldwide. They seem to have spread widely since my previous visit to Japan in 2019. This is obviously very good news for Australians, as it’s now fairly easy to get good coffee and cafe food (only fairly easy as the cafes were generally very popular – it was often easier to just to to Starbucks which is less popular).
* The vintage clothes and shoes stores in Japan are vastly better than those in any other country I’ve visited.
* On that theme, almost all shops in Japan are really nice places to shop, and have higher quality goods than are common in other countries.
* The arrangements for tax free shopping were simpler than I expected: while it looked like I needed to declare what I’d bought tax free at customs, all I needed to do was self scan my passport at a desk at the airport. Very few tourists were doing this, so I suspect that the declaration process isn’t being enforced.
* I averaged about 16,000 steps a day.
* Credit cards are now very widely accepted, with only independent casual restaurants and small attractions not taking them. I was cash free for most days of my stay in Japan.
* Google Translate works quite well, and Google Maps is good for trains and less good for buses.