Cruising to Kobe, Jeju Island and Fukuoka

Sailing to three ports of call on the ‘Costa neoRomantica,’ we discovered Kobe beyond beef, Jeju beyond K-pop and Fukuoka beyond ramen.

During my seven-day, six-night cruise on the Costa neoRomantica (see my previous article, “Romance on the high seas”), we visited three ports: Kobe, Japan; Jeju Island, South Korea; and Fukuoka, Japan, before circling back to our embarkation point, Tokyo.

Shell game: The abalone on Jeju Island, harvested by women divers, is fresh, flavorful and delicious.

If you have elderly parents, disabled family members or small children, cruising is a great way to sample a number of destinations without the stress of getting to airports, wrangling luggage and catching flights. Basically it’s like checking into a five-star hotel and having that hotel come with you — pools, restaurants and all — throughout your journey.

Kobe: Beyond beef?

From Tokyo it was a day’s sail to Kobe, a thriving port city on the northwest coast of Japan. Kobe is famous for its beef, but we saw a different side of it during our five-hour land excursion.

Our first stop was Kitano Ijinkan, an Instagrammable enclave of 40 houses in Kobe’s Kitano Yamamoto district. Ijinkan, which means “foreign houses,” is culturally important because the influx of foreigners who lived and worked there over 100 years ago built them in the styles of their home countries, and Kobe became a much more cosmopolitan city thanks to their influence.

So fresh: A seafood bowl in Fukuoka is half the price of Tsukiji Market’s.

A few are open to the public, like Moegi House and Weathercock House, which was built 113 years ago by German architect G. de Lalande for German trader G. Thomas. Done up in red brick with a half-timber frame, the house is a well-preserved example of the Art Nouveau style of the late 19th to early 20th centuries. The dining room has a Game of Thrones feel with its medieval touches, and the weathercock atop the house has become a symbol of the Kitano area, not only indicating the direction of the winds but also said to ward off evil spirits.

We proceeded to Meriken Park in Kobe’s bay area, a must-visit especially at night, because the Kobe Port Tower, adjacent Maritime Museum, “Be Kobe” monument and a new memorial commemorating the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995 are all lit to stunning effect.

At 108 meters, Kobe Port Tower boasts a spectacular wraparound view of the city that you can view from five of the top floors. This Kobe landmark has also won awards for its pipe architecture and lighting design.

The priestess and the flying plum tree: Shinto priestess Hiroko Takayama reads in front of Daizafu Tenmangu shrine in Fukuoka, next to a plum tree fabled to have flown there from Kyoto.

We had dinner at Umie Mosaic, a shopping and dining complex in Kobe Harborland. While I was hoping to try Kobe’s famous beef, a few in our group didn’t eat beef, so we were brought to a seafood buffet restaurant instead. I did get a recommendation from a local, though. While I can’t vouch for this restaurant personally, I was told that Kobe A-1 is a good restaurant specializing in Kobe beef.

For shopping, Umie Mosaic boasts one of the two branches of Asoko, a 500-yen-or-less store chockfull of kawaii and Sanrio merchandise. Kobe also has a shopping street called Motomachi; the Costa neoRomantica actually provides its passengers a shuttle to Motomachi when it docks in Kobe.?

Jeju Island: K-pop feels?

After another day at sea we arrived at Jeju Island, the southernmost point of South Korea. If you love Hallyu (and who doesn’t?), Jeju is your kind of place. K-pop star G-Dragon, who hails from the island and is the ambassador for its Jeju Shinhwa World resort complex, set up his own café and bowling alley there. Every corner of the GD Café is jawdroppingly photogenic, with perennially inflating yellow and red flowers on the ceiling. They also serve delicious flower milk teas, coffees and citrus juices.

G-Dragon’s AC.III.T Bowling & Pub is full of cool graffiti art by “Kwon Ji-yong,” which happens to be the pop star’s real name. Clearly, the multi-talented Bigbang singer wanted to entertain the whole family, what with a cosmic bowling alley, game room with billiards, and art-filled pub occupying the space.

Light and sand: The Zen garden of Jotenji Temple in Fukuoka is lit up at night for the Hakata Light Up Walk. Photo from Showcase.city.fukuoka.lg.jp

Next door is the Shinhwa Theme Park, which Korean kids must love but is baffling to foreign tourists with attractions based on Korean cartoon characters like Larva and Oscar.

According to our guide Kim, fall is the best time of year in Jeju because the temperatures are mild, the leaves are turning and it’s the season for abalone, mackerel and codfish. We sampled the abalone at a local restaurant and it is remarkable in its freshness and flavor.

Harvesting these abalone are women divers UNESCO cited as an intangible heritage treasure. These women make a living by diving 20 meters deep for abalone with no wetsuit or oxygen tanks and catching shellfish with their bare hands. Now in their mid-60s to 80s, these grandmothers have no successors: “It’s a very tough job so the young generation doesn’t want to do it,” Kim says. Consequently, the Jeju government is supporting a new generation of women divers by setting up a school and fishery cooperatives. Meanwhile, what are the Jeju men doing, you ask? They continue to take ships out to deep sea so that their women can dive.?Jeju is also famed for its green tea, so we went to the Osulloc tea museum, a mecca for all things green tea, including ice cream. Korean beauty brand Innisfree uses the island’s marine and plant ingredients in its products, so a branch of the store was located there.

Flower power: K-pop star G-Dragon designed his GD Café on Jeju Island, South Korea.

Thanks to Jeju’s wealth of natural and manmade wonders, tourism is the biggest industry on the island, with 15 million visitors a year, the bulk of them domestic travelers. “There are more FITs who rent small cars and drive everywhere,” notes Kim. “The city’s more natural, not like Gangnam.”

Over 170 countries don’t need a visa if they fly directly to Jeju, including the Philippines, and tourists can stay 30 days. Can’t think of a better incentive for visiting Jeju Island.?

Fukuoka: Ramen, Udon & more?

For noodle lovers, Fukuoka is notable for being the birthplace of udon, tonkotsu (or Hakata) ramen and its proponents, Ichiran and Ippudo.

Just like Kobe, though, there’s so much more to Fukuoka than its culinary specialties. So compact you can walk around it, the scenic topography includes ocean, mountains, and hot springs.

Fukuoka’s spiritual heart revolves around Daizafu Tenmangu temple, a Shinto shrine dedicated to scholarship. Shinto priestess Hiroko Takayama told us that Daizafu’s deity is the god of studies, Michizane Sugawara, a scholar and high-ranking government official during the Heian period who was exiled from Kyoto due to a political plot. After Michizane left the capital city, a certain plum tree yearned so much to be with him that it uprooted itself and flew from Kyoto to Daizafu! This 1,100-year-old flying plum tree now stands in front of the main shrine, fenced off as the most sacred among Daizafu’s 6,000 plum and camphor trees.

Kiddie wonderland: The Shinhwa Theme Park on Jeju Island features attractions based on Korean cartoon characters like Larva and Oscar.

Many students from all over Japan come to Daizafu to pray for success in their studies and exams, and it’s also popular in spring for its profusion of plum blossoms and camphor leaves. Takayama, who’s one of only two Shinto priestesses (the 2,000-year-old religion only started accepting women as priests 50 years ago), picks plums in June and makes pickles to offer to the god in ceremony. The temple also sells amulets, paper fortunes and plum ice cream to visitors.

We roved around Hakata Old Town, passing through Sennen-no Mon, a welcome gate made with camphor wood from Daizafu and carved with traditional Hakata textile patterns and good-luck charms.

Hakata used to be Japan’s biggest trading port 2,000 years ago, with many Chinese traders living in the area. Today it’s still the No. 1 port of call in Japan, with important events like the Rugby World Cup, which will be held there next year.

Teatime: The history of tea and teaware is featured at the Osulloc Tea Museum on Jeju Island, South Korea.

We visited another temple — Buddhist this time — Jotenji, known as the birthplace of soba, udon and Japanese sweets like manju and red bean-filled umegai mochi. A Buddhist priest went to China in 1835 and mastered the art of making these sweets, we’re told.

By this time, I wanted to say, “Onaka suita (I’m hungry)!” so we were taken to lunch at Hakata Bayside Place, a facility with a restaurant, aquarium and hot springs. There we had — not ramen — but an amazing sashimi and uni (sea urchin) rice bowl with fish soup for half the price of what you would get at Tokyo’s Tsukiji Market (and better quality, besides).

So, another preconception busted, or enlarged: Fukuoka is not just for noodle freaks but also seafood lovers (oysters are another specialty). For pasalubong I bought mentaiko crackers before we headed back to the Costa neoRomantica and our return journey back to Tokyo, with heart and stomach filled.

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For information on Costa cruise promotions like “kids below 18 cruise for free,” free upgrades, free 10x non-alcoholic drinks, free hotel service charge and “4-to-Go,” visit www.costaasia.com.

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