Corbridge Family Blog: Fukuoka, Japan

I will let you know right now that this post is mainly for my brother, Bryce. So if you want to skip over it, I am not offended at all. Nineteen years ago he served as a missionary in Fukuoka, Japan. I know he has wanted to return, but just hasn't had the right set of circumstances available to do so. We spent one day in the city of Fukuoka so I spent some time in a park he recommended and just enjoyed visiting a place he loves so much. As we walked around I imagined him being here many years ago.

We started off our time in Fukuoka at the airport with directions on how to get to our hotel on the subway. We really thought hard about just taking a taxi as we walked by the taxis lined up, but decided we would stick with our original, and less expensive plan, of taking the subway. It ended up being the easiest time we had navigating a new subway system so far!

We arrived at our hotel and the staff was so friendly and we were very happy to find such clean rooms. We have stayed in some not so clean rooms this past year! The thing that surprised us was the toilet. It had more technology on it than any toilet I have ever seen! I didn't even figure out what all the various settings do.

We attempted to find a fish market without any success, We are blaming it on the lack of English on the map we were using. We did find a McDonald's where the kids ate dinner while Rich and I ate at an Indian restaurant. I know, we should be eating Japanese food while in Japan. But honestly we didn't know what to order or where. We were finding English to be very limited!

The next morning we went to Ohori park and walked around the old Fukuoka Castle. At the visitors center we found a very friendly lady who gave us English maps. So we spent some time exploring the area until it was time to return to our hotel and retrieve our luggage out of storage and leave for the temple.

This time we did decide to use a taxi since it was a more complicated route to get there. We have had some bad luck with taxi drivers in the past and were a bit worried about this ride too. But it was so easy! Sam had written the address in Japanese and the drivers drove us right there. I think taxi drivers around the world should take a lesson from the ones here!

The mission office is below the temple so we stopped in there and talked with some of the missionaries. We asked where to get good ramen and the Elders prepared a great scavenger hunt for us. They printed out a map and also various pictures of landmarks we would see along the way. We just followed the map and pictures to a great restaurant. The ramen here is nothing like Top Ramen! So good! We then walked back to the mission office and were able to meet the mission president and his wife and enjoyed visiting with them. They said they hoped Sam would be returning to that mission next year when he is old enough to go on a mission. From the little I experienced in Fukuoka, I think that it would be a great place for him to serve a mission.