KitaKyushu

Our first trip out from Shimonoseki, we went to KitaKyushu. Kokura was the city, to be exact. In this pic, you can see the "cheese wedge" shaped building behind the wild woman chasing pigeons. That is 1 building of the Riverwalk Mall.

Directly behind the mall, and across the pigeon bridge, is Kokura Castle. Here is a picture of the castle with a clever lamppost in front of it. They tend to sneak into every picture.

The sakura were just starting to show their color when we

were there. It was a rainy day, and late in the afternoon and just beautiful.

Inside, ninja were scaling the wall to attack the speaker set up in the diorama of Kokura in the early 1600's. It was quite an impressive diorama, with more than 1500 dolls, all in period costume, and a featured fight at Ganryugima (see http://homsar06.blogspot.com/2008/04/ganryujima.html for more info on that subject). There were cool samurai headgear displayed, and portraits of the daimyo, and other cool stuff from the culture of the era.

I really like the demon mask with his tongue sticking out. I'd be scared to have someone wearing that come after ME.

It was pretty cool to be there, all in all.