While the others went on their trip to Nagasaki, We deviated
firmly and finally from the plan and decided to do our own
day tour of the city, focusing on the Hakata district, which
is of some historical importance and also is conveniently
located within easy walking distance of the hotel.

The atmosphere was a little misty to begin with, but without
the aggressive rain of the day before. And it did clear up
and warmed considerably as time went by.

We started out walking north to look for a yakiniku place
that I'd heard good things about but was detoured by lili's
news that some famous shopping area, Kawabatadori, was
nearby. It's a covered arcade a quarter mile long. When we
found it, many of the stalls and shops were not yet open
(I guess we were there around 10), but I imagine that it
might get hopping at mealtime or in the evening.

At the end of the street to the left is the Kushida Shinto
shrine (founded in 757), a complex of buildings old and
new, sculpture, and a place where you can cleanse your soul
by drinking stagnant water out of a wooden dipper, I'm not
sure what that ritual is called.

The shrine precinct is dotted with numerous sculptures, some
devotional or mythological, some, as in Fukuoka's own
Mannekin Pis, just whimsical.

Right nearby are the Hakata Traditional Craft and Design
Museum and the Hakata Machiya Folk Museum. We decided that
the former was too commercial and went down the street to
the other, which turned out to be even more so, so back
we went and are glad we did - though the downstairs is a
salesroom with the token artisan working on a project,
the upstairs is a nice little room that showcases the
local crafts, from blown glass to fine fabrics to dolls
and more specialized things, such as tops (the first in
Japan to have a metal axle) and ... scissors made by
swordsmiths. You are asked not to photograph the exhibits,
something I got around by taking shots from a couple of
the quite interesting videos on offer.

To get to the temples we wanted to see we had to walk
past the Folk Museum, so we poked our noses in and decided
that we'd seen more interesting elsewhere.

The Tocho-ji temple with its gigantic wooden Buddha was our
next stop. Founded in 806, it is the headquarters of Shingon
Buddhism and boasts one of the largest wooden Buddha statues
in Japan (perhaps THE, but sources are confusing on this).
The grounds, behind an unpromising driveway gate, are
lovely, with ancient cherry trees that just happened to be
in bloom and a striking red five-story pagoda. To find the
big Buddha, follow the sign that says "The big Buddha is
upstairs." It's big but otherwise not remarkable. Turns out
(this is not emphasized) it was built between 1988 and 1992.
You are requested not to photograph it, so I didn't.

Down the way and past a busy intersection is the Joten-ji
temple, founded by the famed Enni Ben'En, revered for having
brought the art of noodlemaking to Japan as well, they say,
as yokan and manju and Hakata-ori, the textiles that we had
seen at the museum. Busy guy. The current complex is said to
date from 1242. For some reason, though important in
culinary and cultural history, it isn't the tourist magnet
that Tocho-ji is, and we had a good visit with few others
around. The worship places were closed, but the grounds and
monuments are the draw here anyway.