Activities

I asked the concierge for malls with toys sections. There is a toy section at Canal City, Fukuoka which is right next door. They also suggested Hawks Town Mall, where there is a Toys R Us outlet. This mall is just next to the Yahoo!Japan Dome baseball stadium. We took a bus from outside Tenjin bus station to the Mall. The bus fare for adults is 220yen, kids below elementary school age ride free. The Mall is huge with lots of facilities for kids/family. The Toys R Us is huge with a lot of display toys which the kids can play and try out. Store staff were also quite happy to allow the kids to play with the merchandise.
In the Mall, there is also a kids gym-type of playground in a store. The entrance fee was 400yen/hour which I thought was reasonable. The whole place was padded, with many articles that kids can climb, ride, swing and jump about. The lady operator was also very kind and helpful when any kids gets a bang or falls down. She even brought an ice-pack to a kid who knocked his head! Now that's service! I observed that many mother's brought their kids here, so I guess this is a very kid/family-orientated mall.

March in Fukuoka

We arrived in Fukuoka with a morning temperature of 6 degrees Celsius. Boy, was I unprepared for the chill! Passing through immigration was ok because the immigration service counters only open at 8am. An officer was kind enough to let us go ahead of the queue because we were pushing our 2yr old daughter in a stroller. Most parents with kids were let through as well. We managed to get into a cab to the hotel. Our hotel was only like 5 kms from the airport but the taxi fare still came to about 2500yen! I was expecting that rate from what I read on the Net.

Visiting Japan

As this is our first trip to Japan on holiday, we had to do our Japanese visas for the trip. Malaysians require a visa for visits not longer than 15days. There is no charge for the visa except that you have to submit your application to the embassy on your own and they need to retain your passport for 3 days. We checked on the application process online.