[2014 Kyushu Family Trip - 14] Illumination at Canal City Hakata and JR Hakata Station

December 24th, 2014
What do you know?
It was the golden hour, also known as dusk.
So, even though I thought I would not be able take any night pictures of Canal City Hakata, it actually turned out that I can.

But before that,

I really needed to get some takoyaki from this store.
I like them a lot, they're a nice snack.

and after that...

I went around taking night pictures of Canal City Hakata.

See? Didn't I tell you in the previous posts?
That decoration looks gorgeous at night, doesnt it?

Well, the Christmas illumination at Canal City Hakata in general was very beautiful.




By the way, I also got the video of the fountain show.
Well, it wasn't Bellagio-like like the one I saw the day before, but still.

Haha,
these were some of my lame attempts at bokeh.

I could just press the shutter button of my camera and things would come out beautiful.
Thank you Christmas season!

See? I told you this also looks much better at night.

But the time to leave Canal City Hakata was approaching very quickly.
Although my family was not able to take our time with exploring the entire mall, it was nice spending two of our afternoons here.

Farewell, Canal City Hakata.
I will miss you..

a night city scape on our way back to Hotel New Otani Hakata.

I also took a long exposure photo here as well, because why not?
It's always nice to experiment with my camera! :D

we walked back to our hotel, grabbed our luggage, and headed to JR Hakata Station which had a train that could take us to Fukuoka Airport.

Well, look here!
JR Hakata station also had a lot of magnificent Christmas illumination!

There were a lot of people there too.

Not to mention concerts!

I really like seeing small musicians performing on a small stage like this.

Concert, illumination, and a large number of people made this place look kind of like a festival.

and that was the last view I took a picture of before heading over to Fukuoka Airport.

Cool, there was illumination at the airport too!

but at the moment, all I wanted to do was to find a table

and eat some of this takoyaki I bought at Canal City Hakata!

The authentic takoyaki you can find in Japan are the best!
they're tasty, and the best part is that they always have a significantly large chunk of octopus in it.

Oh yeah, it was Christmas eve.
The airport was pretty deserted.

So... uh..
maybe we could get an upgrade in our seatings?????
ahahahahahaha...
I wish....

The flightback to Incheon International Airport was pretty full.

Anyway, this was how my family spent 3 days in Kyushu, Japan
It was wonderful.
I would definitely revisit if I had the money, time, or better planning!


the end

[2014 Kyushu Family Trip - 13] Sushi Restaurant in Canal City Hakata, Heishiro

December 24th, 2014

My family cam up to the 4th floor of Canal City Hakata at about 4 or 5 PM to have a light dinner.

and what else would you rather eat than sushi?
That's why we decided to eat here at "Heishiro"

The inside looks like this, this place is a "conveyor belt sushi restaurant" where you can either pick the sushi you want to eat that is on the conveyor belt, or order separately.

 This is what should be near you when you sit at a table: a bell switch, soy sauce, tooth picks, soy sauce plate, a cup.

and this, is green tea powder, and it's not wasabi

 what you do is, you put a little bit of the powder in a cup, and add hot water using the faucet that is located at every single seat.

Anyway, the important thing is, don't mistake that green tea powder for wasabi. (like my mother did on the third picture of this post.)


Since we weren't eating that much, we basically ate the ones we usually like.

 tuna, which all of the sushi lovers should be familiar with.

 tuna belly, which is fantastic but expensive.

salmon, my usual favorite (I already ate one in this picture)

 yellow tail, another favorite of mine.

 and eel, which is also one of the expensive ones.

wow
I've never seen anything like this.
an salmon egg roll that used salmon sashimi in place of a seaweed.

and that's pretty much all I ate.
I haven't taken any pictures of the sushi that my mom and dad ate.

So that was Heishiro.
I wasn't expecting too much from the quality because it was a "conveyor belt sushi restaurant."
However, all of the fish were really fresh and everything tasted great!

This kind of reminds me of the time when my friends and I were trying to decide where to have sushi when we were on a trip to Osaka.
One of the candidates were Genroku Sushi, which is another conveyor belt sushi place located on Dotonbori.
Although we didn't eat at Genroku Sushi back then, if Heishiro's quality is to be expected to pretty much most of Japan's converyor belt sushi restaurant, I think choosing to eat at Genroku Sushi might have been a pretty satisfactory decision.

[2014 Kyushu Family Trip - 12] Fukuoka's Shopping Mall, Canal City Hakata

December 24th, 2014
After having some original Hakata-style ramen at Genso Nagahamaya, my family headed over to the Nagahama Central Fish Market.

Well, this is it.
It was more like a market where you auction the fish, it was nothing like Kuromon Market of Osaka

There was this building that was close by, which I heard sold some food

but it was still no food market that resembled anything like Kuromon Market of Osaka.
It was a building with a couple of restaurants that brought fresh fish from the Nagahama Central Fish Market

My family was looking for a light lunch/ pre-dinner snack, not a full meal.

There was a sushi place, but we decided not to eat here.

After wasting our time around the Nagahama Fish Market, we headed over to Canal City Hakata.

I took this picture just because it kind of had some sort of Japanese sentiment

 Well,

Here we are at Canal City Hakata.
This actually isn't the first time we were here.
We were her right after having dinner at Daitoen on the 23rd, but I just ran out of camera battery and don't have any photos.

Anyway, we went inside, looking for a place to have some sushi.
I mean, we're in Japan, you gotta have some sushi.

but there was something else I was looking for first

It was "Ichiran Ramen," because they sell these kinds of merchandise in front of their stores.

and I bought a 5 pack of ramen.
I just wanted to have some good tonkotsu ramen, while I'm not in Japan.

and yes, this tastes amazing.
But I would still say "go eat at Genso Nagahamaya" because Genso Nagahamaya is the original.
While Ichiran is just as good, you can always eat at Ichiran in other parts of Japan, like Osaka, and besides, they sell their ramen so that you can cook them at home.

After buying some extra ramen from Ichiran, I decided to take some time and take a picture around Canal City Hakata until I was hungry enough to eat some sushi for light dinner.

This looks better at night.

This is small, but a pretty nice park.
It would be really nice to relax around here during the night.

Time to look at some of the things inside the shopping mall.

There were quite a number of caricature artists there.

This is where they do the Bellagio-like water fountain show at night.

There's also this, which is really, really gorgeous at night.

Too bad I might not be able to take some night time photos of Canal City Hakata, before heading over to the airport.

Anyway, it was time to have some sushi, so my family went upstairs to the 4th floor.