Volume 16 Issue 1 » 73
Wooden ema plaques hang on a wishing wall at Yasaka-jinja shrine.
luck, and the dreaded and disastrous
daikyou luck. Those who receive good
fortunes take their lucky papers home
with them, while bad fortunes are tied into
knots and left behind on trees and strings
against the building. For such bad omens,
the thousands of paper fortunes form a
beautiful visual backdrop here, a sort of
origami of hope.
A few steps further the shrine offers an
actual wall of hope. Hundreds of wishes
and prayers are written on small wooden
ema plaques that dangle neatly on the
wishing wall. Ema means “picture horse”
from the ancient practice of donating
horses to shrines. Modern rituals now
use five-sided and heart-shaped wooden
plaques with various pictures, including
horses. We see pictures and wishes for
homes, babies, and more.
Leaving the shrine, we make our way to
the nearby Riverwalk Kitakyushu along
the Murasaki River. It’s a block-long single
structure made to look like five separate
buildings. We marvel at the geometry of
soaring arcs and angles where the cubist
architecture stands in stark contrast to
the traditions of Kokura Castle. It’s as if
Picasso had traded his brush for blueprints.
Each “building’s” colour carries deep
meaning: brown symbolizing land, black
for Japanese traditional roofs, white for
plaster, red for Japanese lacquer, and yellow
for ears of rice at harvest. The complex was
designed by global architects JERDE, and
is home to the Kitakyushu Performing Arts
Center, Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of
Art, and Riverwalk Gallery cultural centre.
All this walking, and it’s time to refuel.
We venture through Uomachi Gintengai
Shopping Street, combing through
hundreds of stores to eventually buy
matcha green tea cookies and Kit Kat
chocolate bars in Shinshu apple and
Melon and Cheese flavours. Only in
Japan. Cutting through the alley back to
our starting point, we go downstairs to
Amu Kitchen in Amu Plaza Kokura at the
railway station. Our growling stomachs
need to be tamed, and we nosh happily on
localized pizza: chicken, nori seaweed with
Japanese mayo. We cap it off with a sweet
version of Deutschland-Nippon decadence:
a slice of fluffy chocolate strudel.
From Kokura Station it’s easy to explore
the sprawling network of destinations that
are interconnected by JR Kyushu Railway.
We choose a short fourteen-minute ride
to Mojiko Station, a virtual revelation on
the eve of Grand Opening month. The
station boasts impressive neo-Renaissance
architecture with refinished wooden
walkways, the result of seven full years of
restoration.
A ward of Kitakyushu, Mojiko unveils its
irresistible charm as a romantic seaside
town with western-style 700-year-old
buildings. We walk along the shore,
choosing to poke in and out of quaint
shops and eateries all along water’s
edge, instead of hailing one of the many
modern rickshaws. We arrive at one
of the town’s main attractions, Mojiko
Retro Observation Building. We crowd
into the elevator – this is Japan, after
all – up to the observation deck on the
31st floor. The spectacular view is 270
degrees, overlooking Kammonkyo Bridge
that connects Shimonoseki on Honshu
Island with Kitakyushu on Kyushu Island,
spanning 3,504 feet across Kanmon Straits.