Fukuoka, Japan

#fukuoka #japan #hollandamericacruise #kushidashrine #ohoripark #fukuokaartmuseum

After leaving the ship, we caught the shuttle bus into town where we had arranged to meet a friend of Sue's who now worked in Japan. It was good to have someone with local knowledge who could now speak the language.
​ We started by walking to the Kushida Shrine  which  annually hosts the city's largest festival, Hakata Gion Yamakasa. and the first thing we saw was one of the large floats from this festival. Each side of this was equally as impressive with detailed images. 
​Exploring further, on this impressive site, we encountered torrential rain and were forced to shelter for a while before we could move on.

 Because of the weather, we decided that it would be best to visit an art gallery in order to stay out of the deluge of rain which had descended on the town.
Catching a taxi, we made our way to Ohori park where the Fukuoka Art Museum was situated, containing Buddhist art as well as the works of western-style painters who hailed from Kyushu in the modern age and foreign artists such as Dali, Miro and Chagall.
The first room we entered had 14th century Buddhist art from the Tokoin temple. The centre piece featured the 12 generals attending to Yakushi-nyorai who was the protector of the dragon direction. We didn't really understand this but the sculptures were impressive!
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 Moving to the next room, we saw studies that quite surprised us as they were depicting everyday scenes in Japan such as,  sweeping the ground, Father and Brat, Twelve views of Dazaifu and a Tiger as well as more traditional landscapes. As well as being interesting some were quite humorous.

Our final visit was to the more modern section containing several works by famous European artists such as Picasso. Once again, unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photographs in this area.  As we left the exhibition there was a large sculpture by Henry Moore and a small room with a temporary collection.

As we came out of the gallery, the weather had improved at last and the park looked very inviting, regrettably, it was time to get a taxi back to the centre and, having said goodbye to Sue's  friend, return to the ship.
​He was lucky enough to be staying for a couple more days to explore and sent us photographs of the city by night which made us quite jealous.