**EDIT** Uho, wrong forum! Can someone put it in the right one please? ごめん ね!!!!!
So I finally grabbed a train out of Sasebo to check out Fukuoka. I had so much fun! I can't believe I've been here for about 10 months and have yet to visit there
. There was a lot to do and it was really easy to travel around the city by bus or subway. I would have driven there but it's about $65 one-way in tolls versus $40 round trip for a train or bus ticket!
I visited 3 different shopping centers. They pretty much all had the same stores but the Canal City Mall was the most beautiful. It had a nice movie theater with 4 floors of clothing stores and restaurants. Through the center of the mall was a canal that was beautifully lit at night and had a spot where entertainers would perform every so often a day. There was also a Sports Authority and a Wendy's there which suprised me and I totally had to get a taste of home from it
. Canal City Mall was also the closest to the bus/train station and downtown where all the nightlife is.
Mariona City was an outlet type mall that had two large ferris wheels, one of which was THE largest I have ever seen! I would have enjoyed it much more if it were warm out because it was right on the water.
The Hawk's Town Mall was my favorite. It had a Hard Rock Cafe and a Toys r' us! It was right next to the Yahoo dome where the Hawks play baseball and where lots of events are held. There was a custom car show going on while I was there.
There's an indoor snowboard park that's open all year round called Big Air there. It was pretty cool but much smaller than the indoor slope of Dubai.
Nightlife..... seemed like most people didn't go to clubs until 1am. Once 1am came around the clubs started getting packed with people. There were tons of places to choose from but none of them really stood out from the rest for me. They were pretty much all normal bars that crammed in a dance floor and a dj somehow. I like big dance clubs so I was kind of dissapointed with the nightlife. The music wasn't bad, but some of the clubs were stuck in the late 90's of america. Apparently the macarena is still mainstream.... haha
In the first club my two friends and I went to, I met a japanese girl within the first 5 mins. She wouldn't stop staring at me when we walked in so I had to say hi. I spent the entire night club-hopping with her and my friends. She didn't speak much english but we were able to chat with the amount of japanese I know. She was a little older than me but she wouldn't tell me her age... haha... but if I had to guess I would say in the late 20's. She was fun but she got really really clingy and was pretty much crying when I had to go back to Sasebo! Both of my other friends met japanese girls in other clubs we went to. One met a girl while dancing and the other, no joke, was sitting next to me when a japanese girl randomly walked up to him and started making out with him.
One thing that really caught me off guard was the amount of non-japanese people that magically appeared at night. There were a lot of aussies, brits, romanians, and russians that lived in the city. Suprisingly, there were not many americans. Most of the americans I met were military personnel like myself but I did meet two americans in two seperate clubs that were bartenders. They had moved to Fukuoka after high school because they simply wanted to live in japan, like many of ya'll on this forum
One of those guys was in his early 20's and was from Georga, USA. He told me one day he simply decided to go to Japan and never went back to the states.
Well, I just thought I would share my experience with ya'll. later!
