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Fukuoka is the largest city on Kyushu and consistently rates among the most liveable in Japan, which visitors tend to notice as an unusual ease. The airport is a few minutes from the centre by subway, the beach is in the city, and the food culture runs on open-air stalls that set up on the pavement each evening.
It is not a monument city. There is no great castle or headline temple. What there is instead is a genuinely pleasant place to spend a couple of days, and the best jumping-off point for the rest of Kyushu.
Fukuoka has around 100 yatai, open-air food stalls that appear on the streets each evening and pack away before dawn. They are the single most distinctive thing about the city, and the majority of what survives of this tradition in Japan is here.
Most cluster along Nakasu island and around Tenjin. Each seats maybe eight people on stools under a tarpaulin. You order tonkotsu ramen, yakitori, oden or gyoza, drink beer or shochu, and end up talking to whoever is next to you because there is no alternative.
They open around six in the evening and run late. Cash only, and expect to move on after an hour or so if there is a queue.
The pork bone broth style that has spread worldwide started here, in Hakata. It is cloudy, rich and made from bones boiled for many hours, served with thin straight noodles that cook in seconds.
Because the noodles are thin, they soften fast, so Hakata ramen comes with the kaedama system: you order a refill of noodles partway through rather than a whole second bowl. You can also specify firmness, with barikata meaning very firm and harigane firmer still.
Ichiran and Ippudo both started here and have counters in the city, but the yatai and the small neighbourhood shops are where it is best.
Ohori Park is built around a large pond that was once part of the castle moat, with a path circling it that the whole city seems to use. The ruins of Fukuoka Castle sit alongside, mostly stone walls and foundations, with a good view from the top.
Kushida Shrine is the city’s main shrine and the focus of the Hakata Gion Yamakasa festival in July, when teams race one-tonne floats through the streets at dawn. One of the floats is on display year round.
Canal City is a large shopping and entertainment complex with a canal running through it, better than that description suggests. Momochi Seaside Park gives you a city beach and Fukuoka Tower.
Tochoji holds a large wooden seated Buddha, and Shofukuji was the first Zen temple in Japan, founded in 1195.
Two areas, and the choice matters more than it first appears. Hakata is the transport hub, wrapped around the Shinkansen station, and suits anyone arriving late or leaving early. Tenjin is the shopping, dining and nightlife centre, about two subway stops west, and is closer to the yatai along the river.
Both are well served and neither is a bad choice. If you are staying two nights and want to walk to dinner, Tenjin edges it. If Kyushu travel is the point of the trip, Hakata saves you a transfer every morning.
Hakata Gion Yamakasa runs for two weeks each July and finishes with one of the more extraordinary sights in Japan. At just before five in the morning on 15 July, teams race one tonne decorated floats through the streets on a five kilometre course, timed to the second, with spectators throwing water over the runners. It has been held for over 780 years.
The ornamental floats, which are far taller and purely for display, are erected around the city for the fortnight beforehand and are worth seeing even outside the race itself.
Hakata Dontaku in early May is the other big one, a parade drawing several million people over two days, and one of the largest festivals in the country by attendance.
Nokonoshima is an island in Hakata Bay, ten minutes by ferry then a short bus, with flower fields that change through the year and views back at the city. It is a genuinely pleasant half day and almost entirely domestic visitors.
Itoshima, west along the coast, has become the weekend escape for Fukuoka, with beaches, a much photographed white torii standing in the sea at Sakurai Futamigaura, and a string of cafes and pottery studios along the coast road.
Yanagawa, an hour south, is a canal town where flat bottomed boats are punted through the old moat network, and is known for steamed eel over rice.
Tenjin sits above one of the largest underground shopping arcades in Japan, Tenjin Chikagai, running twelve blocks with several hundred shops. It is styled in nineteenth century European fashion, which is odd and rather charming, and it matters in practice because it lets you cross the district in bad weather.
Canal City Hakata is the other landmark, a curved shopping and entertainment complex built around an artificial canal with a fountain show. Kawabata arcade nearby is the oldest shopping street in the city and better for local goods than international brands.
Dazaifu is half an hour by train and holds Tenmangu shrine, dedicated to the deity of learning, where students come to pray before exams. The approach street is lined with shops selling umegae mochi, grilled rice cakes with red bean.
Nagasaki is around two hours and is one of the most distinctive cities in Japan. Beppu and Yufuin, the hot spring towns, are about two hours east. Kumamoto and its castle are around 40 minutes by Shinkansen.
This is the strongest argument for the city. Kyushu is compact enough that most of it sits within a couple of hours of Hakata, and the Shinkansen and limited express network radiates from here.
Kumamoto is about 40 minutes by Shinkansen for the castle and, further out, the Aso caldera, one of the largest active volcanic calderas in the world. Nagasaki is around two hours. Beppu, with more hot spring water flowing than anywhere else in Japan, and Yufuin, its more refined neighbour, are both roughly two hours east on the limited express Sonic.
Kagoshima, at the southern tip with its active volcano across the bay, is 90 minutes by Shinkansen. A week starting and ending in Fukuoka covers all of it without ever feeling rushed, and Kyushu remains noticeably less crowded than the Tokyo to Kyoto corridor.
Fukuoka Airport is remarkable for how close it is, five minutes by subway from Hakata Station and about eleven from Tenjin. Very few major cities can match that.
By rail, Hakata is the western terminus of the Sanyo Shinkansen, around five hours from Tokyo and two and a half from Osaka. It is also where the Kyushu Shinkansen begins for travel south.
The subway has three lines and covers the centre. Hakata is the transport hub, Tenjin is the shopping and nightlife centre, and they are two stops apart.
Two nights is plenty for the city itself, and one of those evenings should be spent at the yatai. Most people use Fukuoka as the start or end of a Kyushu loop taking in Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Beppu and Kagoshima, which is a rewarding week.
Open-air food stalls that set up on the pavement each evening and pack away before dawn. Fukuoka has around 100 of them, most of what survives of the tradition in Japan.
The original tonkotsu style, a rich pork bone broth with thin straight noodles. Order kaedama for a noodle refill rather than a second bowl.
Five minutes by subway to Hakata Station, which is among the shortest airport transfers of any major city in the world.
As a destination in itself it is pleasant rather than spectacular. As a base for Kyushu, and for the food, it is well worth two nights.
Dazaifu is half an hour. Kumamoto is 40 minutes by Shinkansen, and Nagasaki, Beppu and Yufuin are all around two hours.
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