Dazaifu

Last Saturday went with JM and T to visit Dazaifu, a city 30mn away by train from Fukuoka. It's famous for its Museum (currently hosting a Van Gogh exhibition, last time we looked there was a 70mn wait in the middle of the queue, think about the ones at the back). But the city is also famous for its temple, where thousands of people come every year to pray for success at their exams. As this is the time of exam results, it was packed but still very much manageable.

Here is the little street, bordered by shops selling souvenirs and hot mochi (more of which later) which leads to the temple.

We hunted for a cheap restaurant for a while but couldn't find any so ended up in one in the temple complex. Here is the view from inside, and the view from outside (the restaurant is on the other side of the pond, with the green flag). The stuff in the lake usually has plants but being winter, there was nothing there, still I liked the view very much).

As I couldn't decide what to eat, JM suggested I choose something I've never eaten so I ended up with the dish I've been putting of trying for ever: the japanese curry.
First we had to get our ticket and then the dish arrived:

OK it doesn't look great (insert scatological reference here), hence why I haven't tried it before but note the arrangement of the 3 peas and how the paper towel is folded around my spoon...beautiful. And actually, it wasn't bad at all, the "spicy" bit seemed to come more from the pepper than chillies and even for me who can't eat spicy food (second reason why I haven't tried before) it was perfectly fine. Hurray!

On the way to the actual temple, we saw this guy with a monkey, which reminded me of an article I read on the BBC about this restaurant in Tokyo, where the pet monkeys serve the customer (bring them sake bottles, hot towels and co.)...which raises the eternal question: is the monkey happy/unhappy? is it exploitation? not? what would happened if the monkey wasn't doing that? etc...anyway that's for another blog to discuss.

The temple is surrounded by beautiful old trees, souvenir and amulette shops...all very nice and somehow peaceful even amid the crowd...(i'll put more pics on flickr)

Afterwards we went back to the station, taking side streets...

and found a boot car sale, specialised in merchandising of old mangas. Welcome to memory lane...Anime have been shown on French TV since mid-70s so JM and I grew watching lots of them. JM ended up buying several vinyls (songs, stories) from Candy to Albator, you should have seen his happy face once the deal was done and the vinyls in his hands.

Afterwards, we decided to go for the local speciality, the hot mochi, kind of gluteneous rice paste, filled with sweet bean paste. Yummy! (note there are 2 because T and I had one each and JM went for green tea ice cream).

Once revitalised, we headed back to the station for a smooth ride back to Fukuoka. Awesome day.