Caves & Castle in Kokura

We went to 平尾代　（Hiraodai).

The landscape is so strange!! All these rocks jutting out...But beautiful..

千仏鐘乳洞 (Senbutsu Shounyuu Dou) means Thousand Buddha Cave.

You can tour the cave but when it rains it gets really wet, so better wear pants that are easy to roll up! And to wear a water proof jacket.

I enjoyed it! The water was really really cold though!! 

We also went to Ojika

For more info on the caves, click here.

Near Ojika it's really pretty:

We met a very cute cat who is obviously very used to people adoring him and taking pictures of him haha

We got really hungry after exerting ourselves at the caves (actually I'm just really unfit hahaha) so it was time for lunch!! Which was ramen~~

 I have no idea how to read this and was too lazy to consult my dictionary so too bad :p hahaha

 The inside's really interesting, they have all sorts of old stuff inside. Very retro and they sell old toys and all. It looks so run down right? Haha...

I was a pig so I ordered mentaiko rice plus ramen (below). The mentaiko rice was sooooo good!! I'm drooling now just looking at this damn picture. The seaweed was very crispy too. And with the mayonnaise....One word..... PERFECT.

The ramen's really tasty! I think not everyone would like it. I seriously do not know how they get the egg yolks till they're slightly gooey but the whites fully cooked..but..who cares. LOVE.

After getting energy from (over) eating...We went to Kokura Castle!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      There's a palanquin in the castle that you can get into, press a button and it will move back and forth. Quite funny really.

There's also a machine where you can try and see if you can run as fast as the messengers of the olden days!

They say that normal samurai swords are around 70cm but the famous samurai Musashi's sword was said to be around 90cm long!

At the mall nearby we saw this guy with a pram full of fluffy cats!

There's a river near the wet market and apparently it's a popular picture taking spot:

We went to Chibu's home to a really awesome meal:

 Thank you Chibu's mom so much for letting us stay in your house! And thank you so much for everything else, the food, your company, and so so so many other things!! Oh ya I guess I'll have to thank Chibu too ;p hahahaha

Hopfeully one day I can return the favour and show Chibu's mom around Malaysia!

門司港（Mojiko)

When I was in Kokura, we went to Mojiko!

It's a little harbor and because I guess a lot of foreignors used to come, some of the architecture and designs of buildings reflect that.

This is the old train station (JR門司港駅）:

Isn't it all cute and old and retro??

Water feature in front of the station must be fun for the kids in summer :)

Even the inside of the station's all retro~


We also went to Mojiko Retro Observation Tower (門司港レトロ展望室）which is just behind a library symbolizing the friendship ties between Dalian in China with Kita Kyushu. The library is called 国際友好記念図書館 (Kokusai Yuko Kinen Toshokan).

This is the view from the top of the tower, I think the ticket was 300yen.

We saw banana men!

Guessing they're some famous comedians..



And we passed Moji Mitsui Club （旧門司三井倶楽部) - Einstein and his wife stayed here before. Now, it's a restaurant, event hall and memorial.

There are lots of places to visit and see in Mojiko! Tons more we haven't explored. To find out more click here. Really good site! More info in Japanese than English.


Of course we also went around window shopping!Found a shop where we could sample fish and fugu (pufferfish)!

These are actually real (dead of course) pufferfish! Isn't the big one huge? Even bigger than our faces. The tiny one inside's a real one too.

Also discovered this cute shop called hacomo - they use old boxes to cut out shapes that you can use to make different shapes! The armor you see below was for Children's Day (boy's day actually).

Saw the same shop in Yufuin, which I will blog about later:

I also ate this awesome thing on a stick which was ebi (shrimp) wrapped in deep fried toast (食ってんかのえびパン）! Ohmygosh it tasted so good! おいしかった！...I highly recommend it! It wasn't really near the shops, it was near the bridge near the observation tower.