My feet hurt

So, today was an AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME picture day!!!! Ummm too bad I was retarded and left my camera at home! Gah! I am seriously still kicking myself for it. I tried taking pictures on my phone but it was being stupid and the quality isn't as good and it was tedious and I got over it. BUT the good news is, a) my friend Andrew took pictures he promised to send me at some point and b) I plan to repeat this day trip quite soon it was that fabulous! Sooo what did I do, you ask?
I went to Dazaifu, which is about 20-30 min away by local train from me. It has a HUGE famous shrine that I learned all about in the museum. This guy was a pretty big deal (click link for more info). The coolest thing is that after he died, he was buried under the shrine I visited and became a god in the form of an ox (Um hello I am the year of the ox!!! Coincidence? I think not! Ha) and was called Tenjin in his god form. Ooooooh! I GET IT!!!! (Tenjin=downtown Fukuoka). So next time I am partying it up there I will think of him. Anywayyyy I almost cried not having my camera here because this place SCREAMS "Hi!! You are now in ancient Japan!!! Look at all this nature and traditional Japanese stuff!!!" It was so beautiful. We ate lunch at a place right on the water with a bunch of reeds and TURTLES (so cute watching them swim) with wisteria growing off the roof.

(In fact the whole area had this kind of feel to it):See why I am so mad I did not have my camera?????

We also kind of started to hike. But I plan on returning just for hiking it is so beautiful there. But what is REALLY random (and I still don't understand) is while we were hiking up the hill, we discovered.....................an amusement park?? We couldn't figure out how to reach it because it was at the bottom of the hill with no trail...but wtf? An amusement park in the middle of beautiful nature and shrines and traditional cultural stuff? An American must own it. Ha.

Then I went back to Futskaichi where my friend works and hung out. It is basically the suburbs of Fukuoka so there wasn't too much to do. We wound up going to an electronic store (like Best Buy but with an obnoxious Japanese music theme playing over and over and over...) and sat in massage chairs for like 30 min haha. This was the best massage chair I have ever sat in I must say. It felt like they paid a human to stand in it and knead my back. They probably did as it cost over $4,000 USD. I did have a quick fantasy of owning it in my apt and sitting in it every night. Haha. I wish.

Then I took the train back to TENJIN (that word seriously has a new meaning to me hahaha) and planned on going home but wound up walking over to Canal City (in case you care) to look at any home furnishing shops (And I am making a mental note right now-LUSH and Zara are on the 3rd floor so next time I want to do real girly shopping I can head straight there haha). Wound up buying a small outdoors backpack because I am SICK of lugging my purse around on day trips. There was also this neat circus group performing in the main plaza so I watched that for a bit. Then decided to just walk back to Hakata and take the train because I didn't feel like spending money on the subway. After many checks with a map I (thankfully) grabbed at Canal City and a few wrong turns and about 20 minutes I made it to the station. I have definitely satisfied my curiosity on whether or not it is possible to walk from Tenjin to my apt (I already knew I could walk from my apt to Hakata in about 30 min). But do I recommend it? NO. My feet HURT (well we must also factor in I was hiking all day, but STILL-no).

*Note- I just took that image off of google somewhere, no idea where that actually is.