Last day in Fukuoka! Time for last minute shopping. There were many things I haven’t seen! First thing first, breakfast. I only ate snack in the morning so we needed to find a brunch spot. Our first destination today was Hakata Bus Terminal Building. Why? Because they have Daisho there and I wanted to look for some stuff.
There is a shopping mall too there, including a department store. They have food area in 8th floor but mostly open at 11.00 am. We strolled around the lower floor and found some stuff. Their department store has an affordable price for clothes and shoes. Do not expect to see something very trendy though. For daily wear or casual wear (and some office clothes), it was nice.
By 11.30 am, we went to the 8th floor and I instantly attracted to Gyoza restaurant. Gyoza! Finally I can try it. Not because I never ate gyoza (japanese pork dumpling) before, but because I heard that gyoza also one of specialty from Fukuoka.
I ordered the lunch package, which was rice and gyoza. For the drink, I ordered shocu, and I regretted it after lol. It had similar taste to Korean soju which I don’t like! But the gyozas were really delicious! The proportion of meat and vegetable were nicely done. The place was the only place who sells gyoza so it shouldn’t hard to find on the 8th floor. The name is Ichiro Gyoza.
We went downstairs after lunch and stopped by at Namco Station. This is what a gamer would like! Or if you are a gachapon lover like me, then it’s a heaven. I saw a gachapon machine with pikachu in it. Need to pay 300 yen to ‘play’ it. I inserted 300 yen and turned the knob. The next thing happened was I received a plastic container with pikachu figurine in it. Gachapon is like a lottery, you can’t choose the item you one. Now this is the exciting moment, which pikachu do I get. I got the cute one! Lucky.
Since we were there already, might as well walk around the place. The whole floor was filled with arcade games and photo box. I took some photos without knowing that it is not allowed. A girl approached me and told me “no photo”. I said sorry and we left the place because we’re done looking around and need to go shopping!!
On the 5th floor is Daisho. A really huge one!! I’ve never been to Daisho in Japan, only in Vietnam and Indonesia. They sell almost everything! If you haven’t heard about Daisho, it is a one-price shop (which is 100 yen in Japan), but there are a few products with higher price as well now. We bought some stuff including dog treats and toys for my dog 😀
After finishing in Daisho, we didn’t go back to the hotel but off to Tenjin Station instead using city bus on the 2nd floor. We had no idea how to read the direction! It was all in Japanese language. We saw a “Tenjin” on one of the waiting doors, so we queued there. While we were waiting for the bus to come, I checked on google map which city bus to take from Hakata bus station. There were some according to google but none of them passed by. We were at gate 3 when I saw bus number 13 stopped at gate 2! That’s one of our buses, I thought. So I told Pris to walk to gate 2 instead and boarded bus number 13.
Arrived in Tenjin area, we walked around Tenjin Chikugai Shopping Area. It is an underground shopping area. There are a lot of interesting stores there. We visited almost every one of them 😀
Next to Tenjin Chikugai is Tenjin Core. We’ve been here before but only for dinner, so this time we’re taking our time to look around the shops. Tenjin Core is one of the famous shopping malls in Tenjin area as well. It is connected to Vivre (another shopping mall) on certain floors.
We didn’t take a long time at Tenjin Core because we started to get hungry. Since we’ve already been in the food court of Tenjin Core, we looked for something else. Next to Tenjin Core is Parco, and it looked like it has a lot of restaurants. Upon arrival, we checked their floor directory. We found a crepe cafe! That’s it! Let’s try that.
Unfortunately, what they called cafe and what we thought of cafe were different! It was not a place to eat, but a small shop. Not selling any food or snacks 😦 We decided to look around on upper floor then. I needed to find something for my husband’s staff and found a cute Daruma wooden doll and a cute onsen towel. It is quite special I think.
After we finished with the shopping, we went to the other side of parco mall, basement floor. On the corner, we found an ice cream stall! I chose mango and yogurt flavor. They are using vending machine as well to order. We can insert money with a maximum of 1000 yen. I used 1000 yen bill then picked the ice cream I want. After done, I clicked on the button below and I got the change and the ticket. I gave the ticket to the girl and she asked if I want the ice cream in a cup or cone. Cone! I’ve never tried ice cream cone in Japan so this is a chance 😀
Their ice creams are using Ito Monogatari Milk. You can see them on display. The ice cream itself is milky and soft. I loved it! Pris ordered the plain vanilla.
We walked around a little bit after filling up with ice cream. But it didn’t last long. We had to have dinner before it gets busy. So continue in Parco, we strolled around the basement area and decided to try the okonomiyaki restaurant. They have a soba okonomiyaki which looked very interesting on the picture.
There were only 2 persons working in that restaurant. One lady was taking the order, serving and cleaning up the table. And one guy was cooking the food. We ordered 1 soba okonomiyaki for share. I knew we couldn’t finish it if we ordered one each.
This soba okonomiyaki was sooo yummy! Every bite was delicious. And we made the right decision about ordering only one. After first serving (which was a quarter of it), we had enough already. The taste becoming a bit strong and it was hard to finish it when that happened.
After dinner, we went back to Hakata Station by subway. We stopped by at Tokyu Hands there. Apparently they have 5 floors for Tokyu Hands! I thought only 1 floor on the first floor. We did final shopping there and heading back to hotel, because we had to start packing our stuff into our suitcase, which was not easy! It was like playing puzzle to put everything to fit in suitcase.
And this concludes our trip to Fukuoka! Thank you for reading and see you in my other adventure!
Ciao.
tastymonial 