A. Fukuoka/Hakata - Canal City Hakata 博多运河城

The most popular shopping mall in Fukuoka is definitely Canal City Hakata! With 250 shops and a whole variety of food places, I guess this is a must visit for me because Grand Hyatt Fukuoka which I am staying for the first two nights is integrated as part of the mall! Nice!

It is a 15 minutes walk from either Hakata Station Nakasu Kawabata (Exit No 5), or Tenjin Station Nakasu Kawabata (Exit No 5).
Opening hours (may varies from store to store):

Retail stores 1000hrs - 2100hrs

Restaurants/Cafes 1000hrs - 2300hrs

It is good to browse through the website to see if there's more information for me to decide where I can focus on out of the 6 floors (B1-5th floor)! 1. The Fountain Show (hourly basis) is definitely not a miss!

2. The adorable Moomin Bakery and Cafe located at B1 is a concept cafe based on the popular Norway cartoon character. As the website is in Japanese, I roughly guess that the uber cute dessert set is 1200yen (est S$18.50). Well, it's not cheap, but it's still nice to walk past and peek in then! Oh yes, their hot chocolate is also recommended, chocolate fans may wish to try it!

3. There are some special shops like F.O.B COOP (Level B1/ B186), Mother Garden, Swimmer (Level B1) with unique gift ideas!

4. 5th floor is the famous Ramen Stadium that gathers ramens selected all over Japan (Tokyo,Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kurume, Shinshu, Hakata, Kita Kyushu)...I was running through a guide book & there's even 人气指数 (i.e. popularity ranking) for the ramen shops! I can't write in Japanese but I managed to denote which are the 2 popular stores so remember to jot this down and look for these 2 stores. No 1 shop's Hakata ramen goes at 800yen (S$12.30) while No 2 shop's Kurume ramen goes at 900yen (S$13.90). The range of prices is between 600yen to 1100yen for all shops...

5. Our favourite MUJI on 4th floor! In case you aren't going to Canal city, here's a list of all the MUJI stores in Fukuoka.