Fukuoka Hidden Gems

Fukuoka is closer to Seoul than to Tokyo, and it has been Japan's contact point with the mainland for as long as there has been contact — the Mongol invasion fleets landed on this coast in 1274 and 1281, and remnants of the defensive stone wall built afterwards still run along the beach at Nishijin. The city is really two that merged in 1889: Hakata, the merchant and port side east of the Naka river, and Fukuoka, the castle side west of it, which is why the station is Hakata and the city is not. It is unusually compact for a city of its size, with the airport two subway stops from the main station, and it is the only major Japanese city where the yatai — licensed food stalls that assemble on the pavement each evening — survived the twentieth century in numbers. Dazaifu, half an hour south, was the regional government seat for six centuries.