Day 5 - Okayama/Fukuoka

Packed up our stuff to head to Fukuoka today but stashed them in a locker so we didn't have to haul them around. Decided to head to the Okayama Castle and Gardens before we headed out. It is such a beautiful place and super warm today!! We couldn't stay long as our train left at 1:14pm and those things are on time!

Once back at the station we grabbed our bags and a snack at the kiosk as it's much cheaper than buying snacks on the train. They have these cool bento style boxes with an assortment of snacks... some recognizable and some we had no clue what it was but ate it anyways... No complaints from us, they were good!

Once on the train I pulled out the laptop to type up my day 4 blog all the while this little old lady watched me. Jeff and I busted out our snacks and ate them, the little old lady next to me smiled and said something to me which I took to be how impressed she was with my chopsticks skills. Jeff and I would eat one box and then switch... He hogged mine a bit and the lady laughed, she was cute! She seemed to enjoy watching us.

When we arrived in Fukuoka we stashed our bags in another locker and went on a hotel search. We ended up finding a Comfort Inn for pretty cheap (7900 yen) so we just grabbed it. This not having a place to stay when we go to a city has been grating on the nerves a bit... I should have just planned it out but oh well. Our room was super small but it worked for a place to sleeep.

We hopped a subway train and headed to the center of town to check out the local scene. As we walked around we heard loud music and yelling so we followed it. To our delight we came upon the Fukuoki Asia Dance Carnival - it was pretty cool to watch! Then we went to this building called IMS which is really a 14 floor mall. On the 14th floor we signed up for foot massages. We had about 1.5 hours to kill so we wandered and bought a few small items.

The foot massages were great, I only wish it had been a full body massage as my back has been hurting lately. We haven't seen many tourists so it's been interesting getting around and figuring things out. The massage place wasn't to hard as they had the word foot in english and the times so we just pointed. Our feet smelled from all the walking but thankfully they washed them in a soaker tub. It was so relaxing! The women were super nice to us.

After our 30 min relaxation time it was time to hunt for dinner. We haven't had sushi yet so that was the plan... Sadly it wasn't as easy as we had thought. We walked around forever until we finally saw a sign for sushi on the 8th floor of some building. We made our way through the electronics store and then an arcade to come up something so crazy... Genki sushi, the SAME place we got to in Seattle. We laughed when we realized it but no way were we backing down after all that hunting. It was much different than the one in Seattle as it had computer screens to order and the sushi was much smaller than at home. Seattle wins this round!

After dinner it was time to head back, pick up our bags and crash... and that we did.

Here are the photos!