Fukuoka-shi Travel Guide

At 234 metres, Fukuoka Tower is the landmark of the seaside Momochi district, clad in over 8,000 half-mirror glass panels and nicknamed the Mirror Sail. From the observation deck you can take in Hakata Bay, the Genkai Sea and the city skyline, while the night illumination changes with the seasons. Below, the Seaside Park and beach are perfect for a stroll, and summer brings a popular fireworks festival. With its lovers' bell and night views, the tower is Fukuoka's famed date spot and the best place to survey the port city where sea and sky meet.

Kushida Shrine stands in Hakata Ward, Fukuoka, and is the guardian shrine of Hakata, affectionately known to locals as Kushida-san. Traditionally founded in the Nara period, it enshrines deities closely tied to Hakata's prosperity. Each July the shrine hosts the grand Hakata Gion Yamakasa festival, and a lavishly decorated yamakasa float is displayed on its grounds throughout the year. The large ginkgo tree and old stone torii gate are worth a look. Close to the Hakata Kawabata shopping street and Canal City, it is an easy place to experience Hakata's traditional culture and lively street life.

Nokonoshima Island Park is on Nokonoshima in Hakata Bay, Fukuoka, famed for flower fields through the seasons — rapeseed and tulips in spring, sunflowers and nemophila in summer-autumn — with the Genkai Sea beyond. Across 150,000 sqm, it has restaurants, a BBQ hut, a small zoo and a retro 'Memory Street', a 10-minute city ferry from Fukuoka, a family getaway near the city.

The Fukuoka City Museum in Momochihama, Sawara-ku, opened in 1990; its permanent exhibition tells the story of Fukuoka as a gateway of foreign interchange and of the people who lived here. The star artefact is the National Treasure gold seal of the King of Na, bestowed by the Later Han emperor — a core source on ancient Japan's ties with East Asia.

The Former Fukuoka Prefectural Assembly Guest House stands in a corner of Tenjin Central Park, built in March 1910 as the reception house for the 13th Joint Kyushu-Okinawa Eight-Prefecture Exposition — imperial guests once stayed here. Designed in a rare Meiji-era French Renaissance manner, with a sloping roof and round tower, it is one of the few surviving Meiji wooden public buildings and a National Important Cultural Property. After the war it served as the Fukuoka High Court and a prefectural fisheries school; now managed by the Fukuoka Prefectural Board of Education and open to the public, it keeps its fireplaces, window frames, lighting and geometric-patterned ceilings, with a cafe inside and a leafy garden outside — the most photogenic Western-style rest stop on a Tenjin walk.

Sakurai Futamigaura on the Itoshima coast is a celebrated sunset spot on the Genkai Sea. A white torii rises from the water about 150 metres offshore, in front of the Wedded Rocks — Otoko-iwa, 11.8 metres high, and Onna-iwa, 11.2 metres, embodying the creator gods Izanagi and Izanami. A 30-metre shimenawa rope of roughly a ton links the two, renewed each year by the shrine's parishioners at the spring low tides of late April and early May. The cove is listed among Japan's 100 best beaches and 100 best sunsets.