H and Alex's Day in Kitakyushu

At Mojiko, Kitakyushu, with Banana Man and Banana Man "Black"

My friend H had heard word of a "ramen championship" happening in Kitakyushu this past Saturday, so we made a plan to drive over and get in on the ramen fest!

The drive over felt short, since we had a lot to talk about and generally regaled each other with life stories of interest. When we got to Kitakyushu, we parked near Kokura station (the main station in Kitakyushu, whose name is often interchangeable with the city's) and walked to the train station so we could head to Mojiko, a neighborhood a few stops north of Kokura.

Mojiko is a self-proclaimed retro area, with old Western-style buildings dotting its main pier area. Though I didn't research this much myself, another friend said these buildings came from roughly the Meiji era, when Japan was opening itself up to other countries. Anyway, H and I had reserved ¥1,000-tickets in advance, which entitled us to three decently-sized bowls of ramen that we could choose. We decided to sample a spicy one, a salty one, and a tonkotsu kind (famous in Fukuoka/Kyushu). It was a glorious afternoon of eating to our hearts' content.

What we didn't realize though, was that we had a chance to vote for our favorite ramen booth, by exchanging our three bowls for three voting tickets. Because we didn't realize this, we only kept one bowl, the last one, so we could only vote for our favorites once. I voted for the spicy one and H voted for the tonkotsu. I checked the results today, and my spicy choice came in third! However, I don't remember the name of the tonkotsu place, so I don't know how they fared!

After eating our fill of ramen, we wandered around Kaikyo Plaza, which was right next to the ramen festival. With our ¥1,000 ticket, we got a ¥100 coupon to anywhere in the plaza. Of course I didn't remember that until I bought some bath salts without the coupon, but after wandering around looking for something else worthy of purchase, we went back to the same shop where I bought the bath salts and each used our coupon for a can of A&W root beer. This made the root beer only 50 yen (50 cents)! Of course these were to be saved for later, to make root beer floats with. Naturally!

We stopped for some gelato back at the ramen fest grounds, then made our way back to Kokura on the train. We wanted to get a glimpse of Kokura castle before doing some shopping, so we walked over to yet another shopping center called River Walk. River Walk, with its modern, colorful, funky-shaped buildings, was designed by the same person or team that designed Canal City in Fukuoka. The castle is right by the River Walk complex, so we snapped some photos, prayed at the shrine nearby, then made our way back to Kokura station for ~*sHoPpInG*~

I won't bore you with what we bought, but suffice to say that I walked out of the Colet department store perfectly satisfied! I had had a list of things that are not available in Nakatsu that I wanted to buy, and I got a good number of them. Do note, however, that if you want to buy OPI nail polish in Kokura, the ones in the store Loft are cheaper than at Nails Unique in the same building. By a couple hundred yen (a couple dollars)! Oh well, the shop girl at Nails Unique was super nice and, after learning where we had traveled from, wished us, 楽しんで！This (tanoshinde) means "Have fun!" or "Enjoy!" We did indeed. 

Kokura castle