Fukuoka Trip: Cats and Owls

Last fall a friend of mine learned that the theatre production, CATS, would be coming to Fukuoka and we decided to make a weekend trip to go and see the show!

Fukuoka is located in the northwest of Kyushu island, about a 4 hour drive from Miyazaki. It is the largest city on Kyushu by population, having about 1.5 million people. By comparison, Miyazaki is the fifth largest city on Kyushu with about 400,000 people. Being a bigger city, Fukuoka has much more entertainment and a happening night life and is a lot more international in terms of being more English-friendly and accessible. It is busier and has many big city amenities that we don't have further down in Miyazaki, such as a theatre in the main mall, Canal City, which shows performances such as the one we were wanting to see.

Leading the way!

While, yes, CATS would be in Japanese, we were familiar enough with the production to be able to understand it and obviously we would still enjoy the costumes, singing, dancing, etc. Also, to be perfectly honest, I thought that it would be very interesting to see a famous English show performed in Japanese and I was excited to see just how much of the dialogue I would actually directly understand. On this note though, I will take this opportunity to say that by living in a foreign country with limited language abilities, it's been incredible to discover first hand just how much we do understand from observation, context clues, facial expressions, body language, voice tones, etc. By always speaking with others in a language that we are fluent in, we can easily take for granted the significance of these other aspects of understanding and communication. This knowledge has often given me confidence that even with my limited speaking abilities, I would be able to navigate my way through many new situations here in Japan. That, and of course the kindness and patience of Japanese people.

I wasn't supposed to take this photo I realized later,
but the incredible set of CATS!

Upon arriving in Fukuoka, we dropped of our bags at our hotel and made our way to the theatre, which is on the top floor of a mall complex. Canal City is a cute mall complex aptly named because it is located next to Fukuoka's river canal. It is brightly painted and designed with curved walls and even has a water feature and fountains in it which can be seen from the balconies of some of the levels of shops.

A picture taking area with
backdrop representing the stage

Paw-print stickers on the floor and up the sides of the escalator led us to the theatre. Upon entering the small, intimate theatre and finding our seats in the centre back, we were first struck by the detail and effort put into the set all around us. And it was all around us! There were cans and ornaments and netting and Christmas lights and other random bits of junk all over the walls and draped across the ceiling. We certainly felt like we were in a junkyard as we anxiously awaited the arrival of the alley cats!

Pretty sunset view of the river canal that runs through Fukuoka

The show itself was nothing short of spectacular. The detailed set moved and had many surprising entrances. The beautiful costumes exuded the particular personalities of the characters. But most of all the talented cast, the stars, made the performance. Every song's note was in perfect pitch, every dance's step was in rhythm, and the show played out perfectly with such beautiful grace. Not only this, but I was also so struck by the stars' obvious devotion and attention to detail with all their cat-like movements and mannerisms, even when the spotlight wasn't on them. I was so completely absorbed that it was half-time before I knew it.

The street food stall
where we ate delicious ramen

At the end of the performance the actors came down the rows so that one of them shook every audience member's hand. I'm not sure if this is usually done, but I thought it was a nice touch. I enjoyed briefly touching paws with the magical Mr. Mistoffelees, almost as much as watching the eyes light up of the little grandmother in the row in front of us when he shook her hand ;). And then we audience stood cheering and clapping while the stars lined up on the stage to bow. Even after the actors had moved off stage, we were still applauding vigorously, and so they came out to line up, bow, and give their thanks again. And again. And again. And again! I'm not exaggerating when I say that this must have been repeated about 6 times. And I'm not sure if all of this extra treatment we received was because of the small intimate theatre setting, or simply because Japanese people are extremely polite, gracious, and kind, but either way it was amusing!

Enjoying our ramen! Mmmm!

CATS was an early afternoon performance and so the rest of the day was spent shopping in Canal City before we headed out to find some delicious ramen noodles for dinner. Ramen is a pork based broth, meat, and noodle dish that originally came from China. Fukuoka is known for its ramen, especially the Hakata-style ramen, named after the area, in which the broth is prepared for 12 hours! While it's a very fatty dish that probably shouldn't be eaten all the time, ramen is delicious and definitely should be eaten in Fukuoka.

About to go into the owl cafe!

Having had famous Fukuoka restaurant ramen many times before, we decided to try one of the street food stalls that line the river canal. The atmosphere along the canal was fun and lively and after a while we found a stall that had some stools available. Being a Saturday night, it wasn't long before we had some friendly, slightly inebriated Japanese businessmen sitting nearby pluck up the courage to try to speak to us in English. They even gave us a small gift of sweet hard bread!

Having fun with this big, heavy guy!

The giving of a small gift like this, called omiyage, is a big part of Japanese culture. Omiyage are small gifts of usually little souvenirs or more often unique or seasonal food products from an area traveled to, commonly shared with co-workers, friends, or family members after a trip. They are often in boxes of many individually wrapped cookies or such and are now sold in packages like this at every train station or airport. While omiyage are usually given to others in one's community, a few times now I have been given omiyage by strangers I have just met merely because I am a foreigner in Japan. The most memorable of these was a very sweet old grandmother whom I met on the bus. After just a few minutes of simple conversation, she would not take no for answer when handing me a beautiful small cloth hand towel. I was very touched.

Little Nico was
my friend's favourite!

The next day we had one goal before heading home, and that was to go to the fairly new owl cafe in Fukuoka that we had heard about through friends. If you don't know about animal cafes in Japan, they are coffee shops with areas to enjoy playing and cuddling with certain animals, usually cats or dogs, owned by the cafe. It's like renting a pet for a short time. Well, this is the first that we had heard of their being one with owls so we were naturally curious and decided to check it out.

By appointment and for ￥1,000 (about $10), the Fukuoka owl cafe lets you spend an hour, supervised with trained staff, with a few of their owls perched on you! First, you are led upstairs and served a tea or coffee while the guidelines for handling the owls are explained to you. After this you are free to make your way downstairs where certain of their owls whose rotation it is are available to be handled, while the others remain resting in their cages.

I loved this guy!

The cafe seems to try to have a selection of various breeds of owls available for handling at one time and throughout the hour you get to meet a few different owls, learn about them, and take photos together (with no flash for their protection) while they perch on your arm, shoulder, or even head!

While it was a great experience to be that close and personal with these beautiful birds, and the staff did seem to know what they were doing and care for them, I still have mixed feelings overall about the owl cafe.

"Off duty" owls trying to
get some shut eye.

Firstly, any place keeping animals in captivity limits their range of movement drastically to what it would naturally be in the wild, and as far as I could see these owls are limited to one single perch in a small cage. Secondly, owls are of course nocturnal birds and so it is unnatural for them to be awake and stimulated for many hours in the daytime. Thirdly, while it is good that they rotate the owls available for handling so as to give them time to rest, it is disappointing that the ones not available for handling during that hour were just in cages still in the same brightly lit room with all the noise and commotion of customers handling the other owls and still able to be photographed. It seemed like there should have been a separate space for them to truly be "off duty".

But I suppose with many things you don't know until you go and see it for yourself, and I will admit that I love owls and selfishly wanted the chance to be close to them. Now, after going and seeing this particular establishment I know better my own opinions about it. Other than the suggestions I already made about more space for the owls and a separate area for the resting owls, establishments like this could alleviate the consciousness of guests such as myself if they had a strong educationally minded or conservationist theme and actively supported non-profit foundations to this effect.