Discovering Fukuoka (or: As Fresh As It Gets…)
09 September 2008
Simon and I spent last weekend in Fukuoka, the largest city on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu. The initial purpose of this visit was me participating in an adult figure skating competition (i.e., for recreational skaters) on Saturday, which was truly entertaining, with participants from different places in Japan (plus myself as the only foreigner), everybody sharing a very cheerful excitement and being in a real party mood.
This was not only a fantastic opportunity to mingle with people from all over the country, but also to see yet another Japanese city we didn’t know yet. Without the competition we would probably not have ended up exactly in Fukuoka right now, considering all the other weekend destinations still waiting for us, most of them more famous, and definitely closer to Tokyo than Fukuoka, like Kyoto, Kobe or Sendai. Luckily I happen to have a friend in Tokyo who is originally from Fukuoka, and she gave me plenty of restaurant recommendations, so at least this part of the trip could impossibly fail.
Having heard little else about the place, we didn’t expect much of Fukuoka as a city, and it was a very positive surprise, indeed! As many Japanese cities, I wouldn’t really call it "beautiful" in the narrow sense of the word, and tourist attractions are maybe scattered more scarcely than in other places, but it struck us as just a really pleasant city to be in. Being the result of the merger of two towns which grew together (the old port city Hakata, which is still the name of the central district, and the former castle city Fukuoka) the city is reasonably sizable, and offers plenty of opportunities for leisure activities, including a huge park in the middle of the city and beautiful, vast, man made sandy beaches along a newly developed seaside district.
Various rivers and canals cross the central area, which gets lively at night when food stalls are lined up along one side of the Naka River, while nice bars and restaurants directly face the water on the other side, and the sound of street musicians fills the air. The popular food stalls (yatai) are probably Fukuoka’s best known symbol. Only open at night, they serve various kinds of skewers as well as a special type of ramen noodles, which they are most famous for. The relatively thin ramen noodles are served in a pork bone broth called tonkotsu. I am usually not such a big fan of pork, but this was just so tasty – delicious! It was also just fun sitting there at the counter, a glass of sake in the hand, enjoying the vivid atmosphere and watching the cooks energetically handle the noodles and the broth in about army-sized pots.
The culinary highlight, however, was our lunch on Sunday. I had been looking forward to it ever since my friend had recommended me this restaurant, apparently very famous for squid, another specialty of Fukuoka. But this just topped all expectations, setting standards of freshness we had certainly not experienced before (animal rights activists had better stop reading here).
We were seated at a u-shaped counter, in the centre of which the living squid were swimming in a big pool. Whenever somebody ordered, the chef would come out of the kitchen (which faced the pool from its fourth side), catch a squid and prepare it as sashimi right away, cutting the body into thin slices, and placing it back onto the tentacles – which kept moving! You may think of the method what you want – the result was absolutely delicious. This unparalleled freshness made such an enormous difference – the squid was almost transparent and extremely tender, and had absolutely nothing to do with the somewhat chewy bits you often get on "ordinary" sushi.
When we had finished eating the raw strips of the squid’s body, the tentacles (which had stopped moving in the meantime) were prepared as tempura (i.e., deep-fried in a thin and crunchy layer of egg-based batter), which was equally delicious. Other than that, our menu included various fish-based dishes, among which I think the sea bream and vegetables stewed in a sweetish, thick sauce also deserves special mention. Although we wisely picked the smallest menu, we could impossibly finish it all, and I was really glad that my Japanese skills are meanwhile good enough to ensure the hosts how much we enjoyed the meal!
