Imported Goods Festival at Sumiyoshi Shrine

Sunday morning we had a bit of a late start to the day.  I think the little one is feeling a bit under the weather.  She's starting to get the sniffles, so the congestion has caused some sleepless nights.  It took her a while for her to finally fall asleep last night, hence the late start of the next morning.  However, I just found out that I bought scented toilet paper.  Ha-ha-ha!  Not only it's pretty with flowers, but it's lightly scented that smells like flowers the little one tells me.  It didn't cross my mind too much.  I bought it because one, it was soft two ply and two it was cheap.  I guess there was a bonus of it being scented and pretty looking?  Go figure.

I sat in front of the laptop (my pc is on its death bed waiting for surgery) searching for Halloween ideas.  Apparently,  KK wants to be a spider this year and I haven't found any great craft stores here.  No Michael's here.  Who better to ask for a craft store than our Art Teacher, Ms. Toyama.  She actually gave KK a list and even drew out a map for her.  She's so sweet.  As I search for Halloween ideas, I thought of things we haven't done yet that we wanted to do.  Ah ha! There is the Fukuoka Municipal Zoo & Botanical Garden~! I think we can go there!  I map out the place and looked up all the admission information and even calculated all costs for the trip to and from.  I turn to the little one and asked her if she wants to go.  I get a "Sure." I look at her and girl is still in her chones!
"Get some pants on please." I requested.  It's so funny how she finds every moment to run around in her underwear when her father is gone for work.  Ha-ha-ha!

By this time it's close to noon! Yikes! Where has the time gone today?  I made lunch and we ate and got ready.  Hmm.. I thought, by the time we get there it would almost be 2pm?  The zoo closes at 5pm?  Is it worth it to even go out there at this time? I felt a little bad and didn't want to go there without Kevin either, so I gathered up all my notes for the trip and stuck it on the fridge.  A trip for another day.

I text coworker Lani, who has a little girl too.  Wonder what they are doing today?  Playdate? They were riding out to Tenjin for an imported goods festival and invited us along.  Since plans had changed with us this afternoon, we decided to join the two on this little adventure downtown.  Today's weather was quite nice for a bike ride to downtown.  The bike ride is about 6.5km/4mi one way.  Lani and Sunny met us at our apartment and the four of us rode out.  We enjoyed the views of Fukuoka and it was a plus that it was cool out today.  Some how, we rode all the way out to Gion and almost out to Hakata if we didn't stop.  Lani stopped a man and asked for directions.  He told us we needed to turn around.  Finally, I took out my iPhone and mapped it out.  This whole time Lani was maneuvering from an actual map map.  We turn around and on our way again.  Ah, finally... we made it.  The shrine's entrance was definitely not hard to miss at all.  It was a 7.5km/4.6mi trip to the shrine from our apartment; great exercise.  The Shrine's entrance was fairly big, long and wide.  It has the structures of what any normal shrine has.  So about the shrine:   

This shrine is dedicated to the gods of Sokotsutsuo-no-kami, Nakatsutsuo-no-kami and Uwatsutsuo-no-kami and it was officially designated in ancient time as one of the high ranked shrines.  It was once admired as the greatest shrine of Chikuzen area (northern part of the present Fukuoka prefecture). The surrounding area was originally a cape at the mouth of Nakagawa River flowing into Hakata Bay. It was worshiped as a tutelary shrine of navigation. The gods were also worshiped as gods of Japanese poem (waka) and ancient famous poet Sogi visited this shrine to pay respect to the god. The straight shaped roof of the main hall of this shrine is one of the specific features of ancient architectural style, very contrastive to the later Buddhist style. The main hall is designated as a national treasure and the copper axe and sword of the shrine are designated as important cultural properties of the prefecture. 
 

At the entrance both girls are in need of a snack.  Luckily, I packed a few of Great Grandma's Persimmon cookies.  The girls had some and they were quiet again.  The four of us walk in and of course, we take a few photos as we chatted up the path.  You can't miss the bright orange colors of the buildings.  The scenery was quite beautiful and peaceful like.  We saw some people who "work" at the shrine and they are dressed in old traditional clothing.  I actually wanted to take a photo, but they were moving too fast and I wasn't sure if that was impolite of me to do so.  So, I stopped myself from taking the photos of the people.  There is a large map in Japanese posted and we were trying to figure out which section is the Imported Goods Festival at.  We just wandered and looked and then... we hear drums beating.  We hear people.  Oh! It must be at the other side of this wall!  So we head other and there it was... the Festival.

As we followed the drum beats to the festival, the first thing I noticed was the first stall.  A couple of African men were playing their musical instruments and that is where the drum beats were coming from.  There were many "colorful" things at this festival as they came from around the world.  One thing I did noticed was it was a very small festival.  At a glance of an eye, you can see all the stalls.  "This is the hippie-est I've ever seen Fukuoka." Lani says to me.  I know right?  Fukuoka is not a "hippie" city by far, but to see all these things here was pretty fun to see.  We walked around a couple of times and looked at all the little "antique" trinkets.  We started heading back out, but stopped at the African goods again.  They did have some pretty neat stuff and they were all handmade.  To me, it was a bit pricey for the "quality" of the goods tho.  They had these neat looking Croc purses.  According to the man, they are made from real Crocs! He says they are a bit pricier than the other accessories.  I picked one up and looked at it.  It "could be" real, but the quality of how it was made made it look cheap, so we passed.  I just thought, dang... poor Croc died for this purse and it was made so poorly.. how sad! My mom would have loved to have one of those purses, but I wouldn't have gotten something that was so poorly put together.  Get what you pay for??

The girls were ready to leave because they walked out without us.  As it was getting late, we had to start heading back because it was a bit of a bike ride home.  We headed on back, so we can feed, bathe and tuck our girls in bed since tomorrow is a school day.

Although the festival was really small, it was at a really nice location and it was free.  Looking at the Shrine's official website, they have events there quite often.  Maybe we will visit again later on down the road for another event.    It was just great to get out for a change.  I've been feeling pretty slummed recently and Kevin is not home to talk to me.  I don't have many friends here, so it does get lonely sometimes.  I was happy to get out and got some exercise too.  Thanks Lani!  Next week is the Autumn Festival.  Can't wait.  Can you?

Sumiyoshi Shrine --website

Sumiyoshi Shrine --Google Map