As my bus crawls into Fukuoka, I wonder what is going on. Traffic is at a stand still everywhere. Traffic lights linger on red a lot longer than usual. We pull into my penultimate stop. It is here that the bus driver explains to me in Japanese that it would take too long to drive to Hakata Station (the station I have paid for, albeit at a very reasonable discount). He suggest that I get off here and walk. Effectively, he is kicking me off the bus.

For some reason, the exit to the bus station takes me into the seventh floor of a department store. The sound here is deafening. Everywhere there are young women holding signs and screaming about whatever products they are tying to sell. I eventually find the lift, and get the hell out of here. I can’t quite work out how I went into the seventh floor from what I thought at the time was ground level. Very confusing. I see a sign telling me not to blow up trees. Very confusing.

As I walk out of a Tenjin Station, I have no idea which direction to go. I would normally look at a map but I can’t find one anywhere. Instead, I see the biggest crowd of people I have ever seen on the streets. This might explain the traffic problems. It turns out I’m at a practice run for Tuesday’s Hakata Gion Yamasaka Festival, a seven-hundred-and-fifty-year-old tradition in Fukuoka. Surprisingly, it draws up to a million spectators every year. Lucky me.

There are people here throwing buckets of water over the performers. It is a hot day, so I can understand why. I do, however, begin to get annoyed. I am trying to get to Hakata Station, and I have a very heavy bag on my shoulders. It is frustrating because there are no maps anywhere here. In the end I have to disturb a policeman. “This way, this way,” the policeman says, not pointing in any direction at all.

I have an empty bottle of water but I haven’t seen a single vending machine since getting off at Tenjin. No vending machines means no bins. So I have a heavy bag and a useless empty bottle; and I still can’t see Hakata Station. This is one of the few times in Japan that I am getting really irritated. To make matters worse, every place I go, the road is blocked by hordes of Yamakasa performers.

After forty-four minutes, I finally make it to Hakata Station. I wait what feels like three hours for the traffic lights to change to a pedestrian green, and take a walk through the station. There is a construction site next door that has been heavily decorated with baskets of flowers. A nice idea. After spending two weeks in quaint Beppu, I am now suffering from city shock. In Beppu I longed for crowds and nightlife. In Fukuoka, I want everyone to stop coughing, talking, getting in my way, and let me enjoy some peace and quiet. Please.

From Hakata Station the directions provided by my hostel are perfect. I pay the ¥28,000 for two weeks in a four bed dormitory; not bad. After sorting out hostel stuff, I remember that I haven’t had any food today. I walk back toward Hakata Station, and enter a building full of restaurants. There are more restaurants in this building than the whole of Beppu. I see a sign for a restaurant selling horse meat, which is unfortunate for the horses.

I see people queueing for restaurants. The first time I have seen this in years. I eventually settle on a vegetarian restaurant. Vege Style Dining. It turns out this is a pasta and pizza restaurant offering a mix of meat dishes and vegetarian style food. The menu, sadly, is in Japanese. I order a Suntory whisky highball and wait for a waiter. The waiter comes over and asks me in fluent English if I can read Japanese. I tell him I can. I lie. Subsequently, I order a salmon and broccoli pizza.

The highball comes out, and is very strong. I drink it in one go and order a second. My not very vegetarian salmon pizza arrives with the second highball, perfect timing. I didn’t expect so much broccoli, eight huge florets, one on each of the eight slices of pizza. I pay ¥1879 in total. Good value considering two drinks and a huge pile of broccoli.

I see a sign saying Namco. I take the lift (elevator) to the seventh floor of the train station and find an arcade the size of a train station. Here I pay ¥100 for one hundred pachinko balls, I lose. I am surprised to see AKB48 machines. They are next to the smoking area. Getting children addicted to pachinko makes me a little annoyed.

There is a section of the arcade with fourteen Tekken machines. As I take photographs, a staff member tells me I am not allowed to photograph in here. I play another round of ¥1 a ball pachinko, before leaving with my losses.

Heading back to the hostel, I count seven convenience stores. One Seven Eleven, three Lawson Stores, two Family Mart, and one Daily Yamazaki. All on the same road. Where I am standing right now, I can see three Lawson Stores. A panoramic view of signs bright blue. So many convenience stores. If you played the Konbini Hop drinking game here, you would be dead in an a hour. I see a confectionery shop that simply makes me smile:

Back at the hostel it is 8 p.m. It really is nice here, the atmosphere superb. Everyone greets you with a ‘Hello’ when you enter a room, as it should be. I assist a Korean man who has a job interview tomorrow with his English; his pronunciation is good but slightly off. I spend six hours in the common area, engaging in conversations with other guests, the hostel boss, and the numerous cleaning staff who work here for three hours a day in exchange for accommodation—a pretty good deal.

Tomorrow I make plans to meet a friend I know from England, I am quite looking forward to seeing her. She has been in Fukuoka for a few weeks now. The plan is to do karaoke until the early morning, then head to Hakata Gion Yamasaka Festival for exactly one minute to five, the start time for the main event. A very odd time to start a festival.