Fukuoka

Hakata Station is the western terminus of the Sanyo Shinkansen, about five hours from Tokyo and two and a half from Shin-Osaka, and the start of the Kyushu Shinkansen south to Kagoshima. Fukuoka Airport is remarkable for being five minutes from Hakata by subway — closer to the centre than almost any airport in Asia. Two subway lines and the Nishitetsu private railway cover the city and reach Dazaifu in about half an hour from Tenjin. Yanagawa's punting is at the end of the same Nishitetsu line. The Itoshima coast is best by car or rental bicycle, and ferries run from Hakata port to the offshore islands and to Busan.

Fukuoka is where a Kyushu trip begins, and that is exactly why it gets treated as a corridor. Flights land close enough to the centre that people check in, eat once, and leave the next morning for somewhere with a stronger reputation. The prefecture then reads as a station with good ramen attached, which is a fair description of a night and an unfair one of the place.

The practical fix is to invert the plan. Because the shinkansen puts several other prefectural capitals within an hour or two, and because the private lines cover the near sights quickly, Fukuoka works better as a fixed base with day trips radiating out than as the first stop on a chain of one-night hotels. Unpacking once for four nights and returning each evening to a city with a proper food scene is usually a better holiday than dragging a suitcase across Kyushu, and it costs less.

Two days for the city, three if you want Dazaifu and the coast. Fukuoka is the most liveable big city in Japan by most measures and it is compact — the airport is five minutes from the main station by subway, which is a genuine outlier and shapes any Kyushu itinerary.

Within the prefecture: Hakata and Tenjin are the two halves of the centre and are a subway stop apart. Dazaifu, with its plum-blossom shrine and a national museum, is about forty minutes by private railway. Itoshima, a coastal stretch of beaches, cafés and a shrine in the sea, is thirty to fifty minutes west and wants a car or a bicycle.

Fukuoka is also the gateway rather than the destination for most of Kyushu — Kumamoto is forty minutes by shinkansen, Nagasaki about ninety, Beppu roughly two hours by express. Two days here plus a week elsewhere is the shape most trips take.

The open-air stalls are the argument for this city and they operate on rules worth knowing before you sit down. They set up in the late afternoon on pavements around the river and in Tenjin, seat somewhere around six to ten people on stools along a counter, and pack away entirely overnight — the stretch of pavement you ate on is bare by breakfast. Many are cash-only, and the licence system means the number of them is limited and the operators are known quantities rather than a floating market.

The etiquette follows from the size. You are sharing a counter with strangers and with the owner cooking a metre away, so order something reasonably promptly, keep bags on your lap or the hook provided, and do not settle in for three hours while a queue forms behind you. Move to a second stall instead — that is the intended pattern, and it is the best evening the prefecture offers.

Hakata tonkotsu ramen is thin straight noodles in cloudy pork broth, ordered by firmness, with a kaedama refill of noodles rather than a second bowl — the yatai in Nakasu and the shops around Hakata Station are the natural places to eat it. Mentaiko, pollock roe cured in chilli, was developed in Fukuoka after the war from a Korean recipe and is the standard souvenir. Motsunabe is an offal hotpot with cabbage and garlic chives, a cold-weather dish. Mizutaki is a clear chicken hotpot, and Yanagawa serves steamed eel over rice.

Nothing but trains and buses for the city, and this is one of the best public transport propositions in Japan: the airport connects directly to the subway, the private railways reach Dazaifu and the coast, and the buses are frequent and cheap.

A car is worth having for Itoshima and the northern coast, where the interesting things are spread along a shoreline rather than clustered at a station, and for the inland pottery towns. Bicycles are a good alternative on the Itoshima coast. Note that Fukuoka's ferry terminal is also a gateway to Korea, which is a fact that surprises people looking at a domestic map.

The Yamakasa festival in mid-July fills the city — a genuinely spectacular event involving teams racing one-tonne floats through the streets at dawn, and a bad week to arrive unbooked. Golden Week and the New Year period are the other pinch points.

Summer is hot and humid, though the city's food culture is largely evening and outdoor, which suits it. The one genuinely awkward period is late summer, when typhoons crossing the East China Sea disrupt flights and ferries. Otherwise Fukuoka is mild and works year-round, with the plum blossom at Dazaifu in late February being an underrated reason to come in winter.

Winters are short and mild with January highs around 10°C and occasional light snow that rarely settles. The rainy season in June and early July is heavy here, and Kyushu takes typhoons from August into September. August is hot and humid above 33°C, but the yatai run through it. Hakata Gion Yamakasa culminates before dawn on July 15 with teams racing one-tonne floats through the streets. The Dazaifu plum blossoms open in late February. Spring and autumn are the comfortable months, and the Nakasu stalls are best on a dry evening in October or November.

A first visit is two days of eating. Fukuoka's case rests on the yatai — open-air food stalls that set up along the river at dusk, seat about eight people each, and serve ramen, grilled skewers and whatever else the owner does. There are few places left in Japan where this survives at scale, and it is the thing to do on both evenings. Add Dazaifu for a morning.

A second visit should go to the coast and the kilns. Itoshima has a shoreline of beaches and small farms with a shrine whose torii stands in the sea, and inland the pottery towns of Koishiwara and, over the Saga border, Arita and Imari have been firing continuously for centuries. Neither is on any standard Kyushu route.