Najima: A (short and incomplete) history

Najima, the little "town" that we live in is today (if I'm perfectly honest) little more than a few rather drab square blocks of Fukuoka's sprawling suburbs. It doesn't have any dramatic coastline or high mountains, nor does it have any particularly interesting sites. It does have an interesting history though. Well, interesting to people like me who live here anyway.

This is how Najima was depicted in the 19th century:
As you can see it was just forested hillside back then. The shrine visible on the right is Najima shrine, which still exists and is just a few minutes walk from our place.

The little island in the foreground has been swallowed up by land reclamation projects and is now just a small hill indistinguishable from the rest of the land.

This here is a print from the Taisho era (1912-1926), which I really like. I've marked Najima's location in roman letters on it:
In the foreground you can see Higashi park, Hakozaki shrine and Kyushu University campus, which all look pretty much the same today (except they are surrounded by lots of tall buildings now). Najima on the other hand was still sparsely populated countryside, though the railroad had made it out there by then.

This is an interesting pre-war photograph of Najima:
The building with the 4 smokestacks was a steam power plant. It survived the war but no longer exists, there is a park on that location now (the only spot in Najima to go from industrial use to green space rather than the other way around!) The hill immediately behind the power plant is the hill that we now live on.

This is another interesting pre-war photo of Najima:
There was a sea-plane tender on the waterfront. The little island visible on the left is the same little island visible in the 19th century print at the top of this post. This is all reclaimed land now with apartment buildings on it.

A very interesting photo from the same location is this one from the early 1930s:
The pilot getting out of the plane is none other than Charles Lindbergh. He came for a little-remembered visit to Fukuoka and landed his plane right here in Najima.

Another important Najima landmark is the Najima bridge, which spans the Tataragawa river. This is what the first Najima bridge looked like in the Meiji era (1868-1912):
This was later replaced by a stone bridge:
That bridge still exists today:
This is probably the most interesting old photo of Najima I've been able to find. It was taken by an American air force plane right after the end of the war as it dropped relief supplies (note the parachutes):
I've numbered a few spots of interest on the above photo to compare with what they look like today. As you can see, even in 1945 Najima was pretty much still open countryside with very few buildings other than the power plant. This is what the numbered points on there look like now:

1: Higashi Najima intersection:
2. These are just some old houses. I include them because after doing a ride around I believe these are the last buildings in the 1945 picture which are still standing:
4: Najima Shrine:
5: Najima bridge:
6: Technically not in Najima, but that is where "Island City", the biggest land reclamation project in Fukuoka, now sits. The biggest site there, visible from miles around, is Island City Tower:
So despite being little more than a few blocks of uninspired urbanscape that people zip past on the train on their way into central Fukuoka, Najima does have a bit of an interesting past.

New Momiji Tree

Ena and I had lunch downtown yesterday at another one of Fukuoka's fantastic little restaurants. For a grand total of 20 dollars the two of us had a great 3 course meal served at our table with drinks and some really great desserts:
This was the Palarmo Grill, which is always packed but we were lucky enough to get seats after only a 5 minute wait.

After that we had the whole day to ourselves with not much to do. Ena was really keen to do some cycling on her new bike so I suggested we head out to this greenhouse east of town where they have a lot of good plants for very reasonable prices. I have a nice little container garden going on our 2nd floor balcony but I wanted to get a small tree to put by our front entrance, which is just boring concrete.

After our visit to Komyozenji in Dazaifu the previous day with its fantastic garden dominated by Momiji trees I decided to get one of those. I picked out a small one and we were all ready to go to the cash when one of the staff came over to talk to us. I actually knew the guy from a previous visit I had made to the place when he helped me pick out some plants. He told us they had some bigger Momijis around back if we wanted to have a look and so we followed him to the back of the greenhouse where they had a really big collection.

They had this nice one with the very finely shaped leaves that he recommended as it was much bigger and nicer than the one I had chosen in the front and it only cost a little bit more. We were swayed, but my only concern was being able to get the bigger one home on a bicycle. He said he could make it fit if he removed it from its pot, bagged it and then tied it to the basket frame. I was a bit skeptical but, in fact, he was able to do it:
So we ended up buying it. After paying for it when we got on our bikes to leave I realized one problem though: even though the thing could fit into the basket, it was so tall that it blocked my view when riding:
This obviously posed a problem and the only viable solution was to walk the thing home - about a 7km walk.

To make a long story short, an hour and a half later we got back home exhausted with the nagging impression that car ownership might not be such a bad idea after all in the back of our heads.

It was our intention to drop the tree off and then go to a local department store to buy a big pot and some soil to put into it. As we were arriving though we met the 87 year old woman who lives across the street from us saw our tree in my basket and we started a conversation with her about it. She has a really nice garden and was in the middle of doing some gardening. She said there were a lot of big old pots that belonged to our landlord sitting in some vacant land across the street and that we could use one of them. She then shouted at our landlord (we were standing in front of their place at the time - we live on a very very narrow little street) and our landlord's wife Emi came out and said "sure you can use one of them".

So it turned into a little neighborhood project and Emi let us use a really nice big pot and the old gal gave us a bunch of soil she had in her garden and we got the momiji looking really nice in its new pot:
And I then hauled it over to our front door:
I give it about 2 weeks before the neighbor's kids accidentally knock it over and smash the pot while playing in front of it (which they always do unless its raining), but until then I think it spruces up our entrance quite a bit!

Hanami

Ena and I have been to see the cherry blossoms a few times in the past couple of weeks when the weather has been good.

Najima Shrine, which is just a few minutes walk away from our place, has some good ones:
Its a nice shrine too:
We also went to Fukuoka castle:
And Kashii shrine:

Snow in Najima

We have been hit by a Siberian cold front this week that has left the city cold and miserable! This morning it was snowing buckets - a rare occurrence here - and so I decided to abandon my plans to ride into campus. Instead I grabbed my camera and went for a walk around Najima, the "town" that we now live in.

There are two hills in Najima that would have dominated the area a hundred years ago. Today you could drive through and never even realize the two hills were there since they've been hidden behind all the apartment buildings and elevated highways that dominate the scenery today. Nonetheless, the hills still exist.

We live on one of these hills. Our hill is basically just covered with houses and trees and does not have anything of historical interest on it (to the best of my knowledge it doesn't even have a name, at least not one that appears on the maps).

The other hill, which is just across the street from ours, has a long history however. In the 9th century a shrine was dedicated to Benzaiten, the goddess of fortune, on top of that hill. In the 16th century a castle was built next to the site of the shrine by the feudal lord who ruled this realm, though it was only used for a few years before Fukuoka castle became the region's main castle.

There isn't much left of the castle today (though you can see the castle's layout), but the hill still has a pretty big shrine on it.

There are a few ways to approach the shrine, today I chose the west entrance. You go up some stairs and then go down this long path to the tori:
The shrine entrance:
The shrine has a pair of guardian dogs (shi shi):
And some cute red lanterns:
And a little stone pagoda:

Our future home

Ena and I went with the agent today to meet the landlord of the apartment we want to rent. A formal meeting is part of the process of getting an apartment here. They were quite nice and we were very surprised to learn that his wife (who was also at the meeting) had lived in Victoria for two years. Even more of a coincidence was that she had worked in the same shop in the Empress Hotel that Ena did (a few years earlier) and they even knew some of the same people. Quite a small world.

While we were there (they live next door to the apartment) I took a few pictures of the place. This is the building, ours is the second from the left (with the white sign posted on the door):
Unfortunately the pictures of the interior don't really give it justice but this is the kitchen/dining room:
And the loft in the second floor:
This is the view from the second floor balcony (the building backs onto a forested slope):
In front of the building is a really quiet neighborhood with some gardens, this is next door (its hard to believe that I took this picture in the middle of the city, it feels like we are in the countryside but within about 50 metres of this picture is the usual urban landscape):
We are looking forward to moving in at the end of next month!