By Jullie Y. Daza Everyone has a reason to go back to Japan for a second, third, fourth time. A clean country where people are polite, obey the rules, and keep a respectable distance and silence in the bus, in a ramen shop, while walking on a busy street or lining up for a sweet. After 20-something years and at the prodding of a long weekend in Manila and low temperatures in Japan, it was time to revisit Fukuoka. Fukuoka – in airline lingo, the shorthand is FUK – is Japan’s sixth largest city, lying on the northern shore of the island of Kyushu. Not as popular among Filipino tourists as Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka, it is home to 2.5 million residents who are proud of its history as a port city and its laid-back lifestyle. As a guest in a relative’s brand-new condo, I won a chance to live in real-time, actual laid-back style, considering the park was three minutes and the market five minutes away, by foot—way to go, something we have not done in Manila in a long long time. We visited a strawberry farm, picking the fruits that were seasonably sweet and plump; spent several contemplative minutes in a shrine right on the main street of the city’s shopping district; gawked like tourists in the ancient city of Dazaifu, famous for its lush natural beauty, the shrine to the god of learning, and a street of vendors selling handmade crafts, street food, and souvenirs. Back in town, a ramen center beckoned—who can tour Japan without tasting cooked-in-Japan ramen?—as did Daiso, the legendary chain stores stacked to the ceiling with goods priced at the equivalent of P50. While my young companions pounded the pavement and each and every floor of Daiso, Don Qui, Tokyu Hands, I sipped tea in a bookstore cum coffee shop, raced toward the end of MC Beaton’s cheeky novel, Death of a Perfect Wife (in English), and enjoyed the passing scene of women fashionably dressed for winter’s lingering chill. After five days the trip came to an end. We were home, enduring a 150-minute traffic jam on EDSA on a Monday night. Home. When and where to capture the next laid-back city?