5 Fukuoka(Japan) Travel Hacks
You Won't Find these on YouTube
For reference, I wouldn't recommend the famous Nakasu food stall area - it's overrun with Korean and high prices from high demand, with no real Japanese feel. I'd suggest the actual food stall areas near Tenjin Station instead.
I recently went on a workation to Fukuoka
The main purpose was to plan an Asia workation program. Japan has the advantage of a short flight time compared to Malaga, and among Japanese cities, Fukuoka seemed like a good place to live with its mild spring/fall weather. However, since I didn't know much about Japan, I needed first-hand experience data about Fukuoka from this workation. So I took this 5 night, 6 day Fukuoka workation. For novice Japan travelers like me, here are a few things that aren't often mentioned on YouTube.
Ten Tips for a Trip to Fukuoka ⓒAgnes Legrand1. Bring Plenty of Cash
As someone who usually travels in Europe, I rarely bring much cash. I might bring 30-50 USD worth of the local currency just in case, but I've never spent it all. Most European cities aside from very rural areas accept credit cards. Especially in recent years, many places take Apple Pay too.
But Fukuoka was different. Even in the busiest downtown areas, many shops didn't accept cards. High-end restaurants, convenience stores, and karaoke took cards, but everywhere else was cash only. You can withdraw cash from convenience stores with a credit card, and there are ATMs at pretty much every convenience store, so it wasn't a huge issue practically. But the first day I struggled to find restaurants that took credit cards.
Most convenience stores such as Lawson has a ATM (출처: fukuoka-airport.jp)2. Restaurant reservations are essential
Since I'm not a foodie and don't need to eat at set times, I thought meals would be relatively easy. But in Fukuoka it's not easy to eat without a reservation. Before the trip, YouTube videos about Fukuoka mentioned things like "open run" and "waiting lines" a lot, and I understood why after being there. You either have to line up before they open or be prepared to wait over 30 minutes to get a table.
You might think it's because they're popular restaurants, but to me it seemed less about being popular and more that Japanese restaurants themselves are just small in size. For tourists, the most common restaurant size seemed to be around 10-20 seats max; maybe 7-10 counter seats plus 2-4 table seats. Realistically they can only serve 3-6 groups at a time. At one Japanese curry place I went to, there were only 8 total seats, so even though it was after 2pm I had to wait an hour to eat. If you visit the hot place with many seats, you don't have to wait.
So, in Fukuoka, making restaurant reservations is essential. If you can speak Japanese, it's best to call and make same-day reservations. If not, use Google Maps - about half the restaurants that show up let you make online reservations for free. After a few days we started always planning the next day's meals in advance. If we couldn't get a reservation, we'd just end up at the Lawson (convenience store) that day.
You can find the button [Reservation] on google map ⓒAgnes Legrand3. You can skip YouTube famous restaurants
Before the trip I researched a lot of famous restaurants on YouTube. Fukuoka is especially known as a hot spot for mukbang (eating show) creators, so there were tons of restaurant recommendations. But after trying out some YouTube-famous places, my conclusion is to just skip them at first. YouTube can give you a sense of the vibe and pricing, but the most important thing - taste - you have to take the creator's word for.
The creators probably want to recommend places they featured since they went to the effort of filming there. But in my experience, the taste was often just "not particularly good" rather than actually tasty. It felt more like these were just decent places among those well-known, not that they were popular for being delicious. In fact, the YouTube-famous spots often had worse service from being so crowded, and there were so many Koreans that it didn't even feel like traveling sometimes.
So from the third day on, we started searching on Google ourselves and going based on reviews. Maybe we just got lucky, but we didn't have a single place worse than the YouTube spots - and at least there were more Japanese people than Koreans.
Food stalls near Tenjin Station with local Japanese people ⓒAgnes LegrandFor reference, I wouldn't recommend the famous Nakasu food stall area near the river. It's overrun with Korean and high prices from high demand, with no real Japanese feel. I would suggest the actual food stall areas near Tenjin Station instead.
4. Useful City Bike
If you can't ride a bike well, skip this.
But if you're able to do some leisurely 10 minute rides around quieter areas, I recommend Fukuoka's Char bikeshare system. Download the app and register a card beforehand, and it's easy to use with docks all over the city within walking distance. It's also cheap at only 50 cents per minute or so. A typical 10-15 minute ride is less than 1 USD (vs. 2 USD for a single subway/bus ride in Fukuoka).
후쿠오카의 공유자전거 Chari ⓒ최두옥I used Chari whenever I needed it over 4 days for a total of around 10 USD. Thanks to it, I could avoid Fukuoka's traffic and had fun riding around areas like the 2km loop in Ohori Park with others.
Another perk is how accommodating Japanese culture is to bikers - there are dedicated bike lanes on roads, and people don't mind if you ride on the sidewalk when needed (something that would get you yelled at constantly in Paris or Rotterdam). For foreigners unfamiliar with Japan, it's a very bikeable city.
공유자전거 앱 'Chari' 실제화면 ⓒ최두옥5. Report lost items immediately
Just my personal impression, but Fukuoka felt safer than even Seoul or Busan. Beyond just an absence of petty crime, there was a strong tendency to follow rules and not want to inconvenience others. I'd heard the saying "you can find lost items in Japan within 2 hours", and after visiting Fukuoka it did seem plausible.
One of my group members actually lost his wallet at Hakata Port, and after reporting it to the police station near our hotel that day, we got contacted on the last day that it had been returned (though we'd already departed by then so couldn't retrieve it immediately).
귀국 후 호텔로부터 받은 메세지 ⓒ최두옥The Fukuoka police were extremely polite and patient, happily communicating through Google Translate for 40 minutes without ever seeming annoyed or rushed. In fact, at one point I thought having the entire staff focused on helping us might be inefficient from my perspective as a smart work director.
분실물을 신고했던 호텔 근처의 경찰서 ⓒ최두옥I also got a glimpse into Japanese peoples' fixation on rules/regulations - when I asked for a copy of the detailed report instead of just the basic case number, the response was "that's not the rule." When I explained I needed it for insurance purposes and asked if they could at least write up a simple confirmation note, the reply was again "that's not the rule." No matter what reasonable suggestion I made, if it wasn't a pre-defined "rule" they wouldn't do it. I quickly gave up and finished the report, but it made me think innovating or driving change could be frustrating at times in Japan.
This post covers only five of my ten tips. I meant to keep it brief but even summarizing the key points took over an hour of writing. So I'll save the other five tips for a follow-up post, with more general travel advice on SIM cards, taxi apps, translation tools, traveler's insurance etc.
