Trip to Kyushu: Kurume & Fukuoka

Our last stop on our trip to Kyushu were the cities of Kurume and Fukuoka. I lived in Kurume for 7 months as a missionary. As a tourist destination it's not much. But this place houses a lot of great personal memories for me. One of the great memories was teaching a person who worked at the first Subway sandwich shop in Kyushu. And we as missionaries, longing for a decent sandwich, would frequent this place. The other main reason to frequent this place was a guy, nicknamed Gonchan, who was interested in the missionaries and then eventually joined the LDS church. Gonchan was our age and had boundless energy. He would call us when his boss wasn't there to tell us to come down and he would make us sandwiches. He even made me a Subway nametag and got a uniform to fit me and I was able to be "sandwich artist" during our lunchbreak.

The only other things that make Kurume somewhat famous are 1)a gaudy and 200ft tall statue of Kannon the Goddess of Mercy; and 2)the Ishibashi family. You may not know the name Ishibashi, but you've probably heard of Bridgestone Tire, the largest maker of tires in the world. They are from Kurume and started the company there. As a side note, the daughter of the founder married a future prime minister of Japan. And one of their sons is the current prime minister of Japan.

Our time in Kurume was spent with Gonchan and seeing other friends that I knew in the area. It was great to catch up. For those of you Fukuoka missionaries, I have to tell you that we dined at the best tonkatsu place on Earth, Hamakatsu. For those of you who don't know what tonkatsu is - it's a flattened, breaded and deep fried piece of pork (usually pork, but also chicken). It's served with a cabbage salad, miso soup and rice. You dip the katsu in an Asian style barbecue sauce and it's wonderful. As missionaries we used to lust after this restaurant. We would always get the chicken katsu and we would go to town on the all you could eat cabbage salad and rice. It was a decent sized chain 15 years ago, but nowadays it's absolutely everywhere. We had to stop in to eat there once. It's so good. Anthon loved it so much he downed a whole thing of tonkatsu, then threw it up in bed with me later that night. In what was undoubtedly major inspiration, I woke up, sat up and moved out of the way literally a split second before Anthon spewed half-digested tonkatsu everywhere. I escaped the sickness. Yes!

After our one day in Kurume, we spent a half day in Fukuoka, killing time before flying home to Tokyo. Fukuoka is the 8th largest city in Japan and doesn't really hold any real special feeling for me, except for the LDS temple that was built on the site of our old mission home. A friend of mine from the mission, Greg Peterson, and I were able to fly back in 2000 for the dedication of the Temple. It was surreal to think that the old home that we would visit on the large plot of land was now a temple. From my LDS perspective, what a blessing that is for the members of the LDS church in Kyushu.

Our final stop in Fukuoka was Ohori Park - a large park created on the old castle grounds. We devoured McDonalds hamburgers and fries and let the kids run. I think our vacation went a few hours too long because in what should have been a fun ride on the paddle boats turn into a nightmare of crying by the children. My attempts to get us back to the dock to stop the madness were futiles as we were paddling against the wind and it made our trip back not only slow but very physically taxing on my legs! If you like hearing kids scream and cry, then please feel free to watch the short clip Shelley took below.





As always click on any of the pictures to be taken to a gallery of the few shots we took in Kurume and Fukuoka.