wind and rain
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
We're in Fukuoka. Mari had a wedding to attend, so we made an extended weekend of it.
We decided to spend the morning out on the "islands" that separate the bay from the Sea of Japan. I say "islands" because they've all been built up with causeways to form a long spit.
We caught the 09:00 ferry by the skin of our teeth* and were soon rocking and rolling on the wind-driven waves of the bay. But we hadn't seen nothin' yet. The wind out on the islands was incredible, blowing at about 60 kph and gusting well beyond that. It was easily strong enough that made walking difficult, and Mari could not control the baby carriage. The carriage, if left unattended, would roll away across uneven surfaces.
The Sea itself was a turgid, roiling thing with wind-swept whitecaps and spray that refused to come back down to Earth. As for the island itself, the place was studded with those run-down buildings that I so love to photograph. I'm beginning to see the wide prevalence of those collapsing buildings as a sign of the country's demographics. There are just a lot of places around that no one uses anymore, and it seems to be because there are fewer people around!
Anyway, we struggled to get around for about thirty minutes, and packed it in. The return bus trip took over an hour, but I got to see Mari's University campus and some of her old haunts.
Later in the day, Ken and I took in the sites downtown while Mari attended the wedding. We visited the country's largest wooden Buddha, a sombre fellow attended by 5,000 smaller buddhas (I asked).
I have to say that the food here in Fukuoka is particularly good. Last night we had what I believe to be the best Matsunabi I've had in a restaurant, and tonight we had some really first-rate Korean food. There's a substantial Korean population here, and Mari's University professor told us that Matsunabi is a Fukuoka-area dish so what we were eating was the authentic dish.
*we're convinced that the boy is going to go grow up thinking that any journey always begins with a frantic dash for some form of mass transit!