I joined this tour as a volunteer English interpreter.
I felt half excited and half nervous, because this was my first time to be a tour guide.
Regrettably, however, it turned out there were no participants from English speaking countries.
Instead we had six nice and beautiful ladies, four from Korea and two from China.

First, we went to the Kushida shrine to see the "Setsubun Festival".
A big "otafuku" mask was set with each gate and people were going through her big mouth so as to cleanse away all the evil of the former year and drive away disease-bringing evil spirits for the year to come.
Then we went to see "Mamemaki" - bean throwing, which is the special ritual with Setsubun festival. Unfortunately, however, there were so many people gathered in front of the stage that we were not able to be close enough to catch the thrown beans. Yet, luckily, Ms. Ann, our Korean interpreter, caught a small bag of beans and she was generous enough to share the beans with our guests.
After that, we went around the shrine to see a variety of items of interest: the decorated float of the Yamagasa festival, the Eto Arrow Plate with its carvings of Chinese Zodiac, big stones called "chikara ishi" which was dedicated by sumo wrestlers, and a unique wall called "Hakata-bei", etc.
All the participants enjoyed looking at those figures and taking photos with the Hakata geisha who were invited to the festival.

We then ate "Yakimochi" - rice cake which was sold at a shop by the shrine. It was hot and delicious.

Our second visit was at the "Tochoji" temple located near Kushida shrine.
We could also enjoy watching the "Mamemaki" there.
"Tochoji" temple is famous for its big wooden Buddha statue. But the most memorable experience there for me was that I had to go through complete darkness to see "hell" and "paradise" pictures behind the statue. It was so scary that I felt like I was really in the "hell".

After all those exciting visits, we went to have lunch at an udon restaurant called "Akachokobe".
Udon is made from whole wheat. It was chewy and its soup was also delicious.

I have been living in Fukuoka for a long time and thought Fukuoka didn't have many features to attract tourists.
This tour, however, made me realized I was wrong.
I really enjoyed this tour and believe our guests felt the same way with me.
I do hope many tourists from both inside and outside Japan will visit Fukuoka and appreciate the beauty of this city.