Reid Main

Today was our first travel day of the trip. We got up at 8am and planned on catching the first Shinkansen (bullet train) we could out of Shin-Yokohama Station. After a grueling battle with the ticket machine I finally managed to figure out what to buy and we boarded the 9:39am Nozomi for a five and a half hour ride to Fukuoka.

I had assumed that we'd be able to buy food on the train but that turned out not to be the case. Supposedly you're able to scan a QR code for your seat and place an order but every time I scanned the code I was sent to a website that just returned a 403. I tried every hour but still had no luck. During the last hour a food cart magically appeared but the language barrier prevented me from purchasing anything.

We arrived at Hakata Station and took the Kūkō Line to our hotel, the Ritz-Carlton Fukuoka, which is easily the fanciest place I have ever stayed. The hotel opened in March of 2023 so it is chock-full of modern amenities including the greatest in the world, a Toto washlet. One of the things I am looking forward to most about owning my own home is that I will finally be able to buy a Toto washlet and stop living like a Neanderthal.

Fukuoka is well known for its tonkotsu (aka Hakata) ramen, whose broth is based on pork bones instead of the more common chicken or fish. We found Akanoren ramen just around the corner from our hotel and it was amazing. The creamiest ramen that I have ever had in my life. It was more like a French onion or potato soup than the traditional ramen I'm used to in Toronto.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to catch up on four days of sumo before I passed out at 8pm. Tomorrow I gotta make sure I mainline a ton of caffeine to try to stay awake until at least 10pm and potentially fix this jet lag.