Adventures in Japan: Venice in Japan: Yanagawa Canal Cruise

With just one full day in Fukuoka, I had a fairly long list of places that I wanted to go to, and Yanagawa was at the top. Yanagawa is located southwest of Fukuoka city and has a total of 470km of waterways and canals that were said to strengthen the defenses of the castle that was built in the 16th century. As such, it is also known as "the city of water", or the Venice of Japan. Their boat tours are popular with tourists, although it seems that not many foreign tourists know about it since I didn't see another foreigner (or a western one) while I was there.

There are a variety of Nishitetsu Train Value Tickets that are available for people to purchase, depending on what they want to do. I opted for the Dazaifu and Yanagawa round-trip ticket (despite not going to Dazaifu) which also included a ticket for the canal cruise. It cost 2,930 yen which still saved me some money since a round-trip ticket from Tenjin to Yanagawa on the Tenjin-Omuta line would have been 1,700 yen and the cruise ticket is 1,500 yen.

The tours start at Shogetsu and ends at the Okinohata and are conducted every thirty minutes or so starting from 9:00. They provide a free shuttle bus service from the station to the boarding area which is five minutes away. I was in the first boat (called donkobune) with four other people and the boatman and although I didn't understand a good deal of the stories that he was telling as he steered us downstream, it was still nice to just relax and listen, especially when he sang a couple of traditional songs for us! The canals varied from very wide, to narrow enough where a car couldn't fit through, but our guide was very skilled and steered us through it with no problem at all :) There were quite a few bridges where we had to duck our heads to avoid bumping into it, but that made the experience that much better. The entire cruise lasted about seventy minutes or so and we were dropped off at another dock where numerous restaurants specializing in unagi seiro mushi (eel steamed in a basket) were located. Definitely something to try if you're in Fukuoka! It got rather crowded as the day wore on, so, like I always recommend, come early if you want to avoid the crowds and have a quiet ride :)