Day 01 - 28/12/1997: First Photo in Japan: The photograph above is the first photo that I took in Japan from just outside the Hotel Toko where we stayed. The Hotel Toko is located near the Hakata train station, which the largest train station in Fukuoka-Hakata from there you can catch the Shinkansen (super-express, we call them bullet trains, but Japanese call them Shinkansen or super-express) to Tokyo as well as long distance trains to other parts of Kyushu.1
Fukuoka-Hakata is the largest city on Kyushu Island which is the Southernmost of Japan's four main islands. Fukuoka and Hakata were actually two cities, but over time they have merged into one large metropolis, with a population of 1.3 Million2. Fukuoka-Hakata is a clean and (by Japanese standards) spacious city, it is famous for its great night life and beautiful women (called "Hakata bijin" in Japanese)3. Interestingly the Airport is known as Fukuoka and the main train station as Hakata4.
We had arrived that afternoon on Malaysian Airlines Flight MH082 touching down at Fukuoka airport at 3:00pm (JST). On this occasion the plane had taken the southern approach in to Fukuoka, which is a very exciting way to arrive because the plane has to fly down a winding valley about three times the width of the plane before coming to the airport. The outside temperate on arrival was 12C and it was fine although slightly overcast.
We had a smooth transition through immigration and customs, actually a baggage porter actually gave our bags to us as we approached the baggage conveyor belt. We booked a hotel from the airport and caught a taxi for the short trip to the hotel.
