We take the huge journey from Kanazawa to Fukuoka, the shinkansen made it so much faster than it would anywhere else in the world, but still! We did as the locals and bought a bento box for our lunch on the train, its like, a beautiful box of rice, meats, fish and pickles (pickled anything that looks alien) with lots and lots of variations. It was surprisingly fresh and really good! Its just fun to eat on the train, like that feeling of eating dinner on an airplane!

We explore Fukuoka (Hakata) a little, there is a gorgeous park in the center which has a huge lake and in the center of that, a little island you can get to via two bridges. Their is falcons, koi and turtles everywhere! A little more interesting than the English classic of pigeons and more pigeons.

We wandered around kind of aimlessly, in the area near the park is a castle gardens with garden after park after garden all zigzagging and connecting, it was stunning. Our first hot day in a while, well maybe 18°C but it was sunny, everyone was out enjoying the cherry blossoms in full bloom. The wind picked up sometimes and made hundreds of petals at a time come falling off like… Well… Snow. Flower snow! But it was beautiful, in pictures its beautiful, in movies its beautiful but being here under them is something else.

It was a good day.

We did a day trip from Hakata, Nagasaki seemed close on the map and was only around 3 hours on the train, again the sun was still around. The virus was starting to ramp up at this point in Japan, the state of emergency idea was being thrown around alot. When we were in Nagasaki, they decided. We had a couple of days before the government asked everyone to stay home as much as possible. In other words, stay home or do you just hate Japan? Needless to say within 24 hours city streets where ghost towns.

We headed back to Osaka, a phew days earlier than planned but hey if that is the worst the virus does to dampen our fun, we got off pretty light. Also being foreign in Japan when there is a virus pandemic seems to give you certain privileges! No one sits near you on the subway and people avoid you like the plague… More than they did already.

So here we are, in a house we rented for a month, in a city in passive aggressive lock down…But the foods great!