I Followed a Cat in Fukuoka—and Found Another World

I arrived in Fukuoka with reservations, landmarks and a carefully planned itinerary.

I thought I knew what the journey would look like.

But the Fukuoka I remember most vividly began to emerge only after those plans started falling apart—and I finally gave myself permission to listen to what I wanted.

A cancelled workshop led me somewhere unexpected. I walked away from a famous landmark I no longer felt compelled to experience. I found warmth among strangers inside a tiny wine bar. Later, I left the city behind for the quieter coast of Fukuoka Prefecture.

And on an ordinary afternoon in Munakata, a cat appeared at the foot of an empty shrine and led me into what felt like another world.

When the Itinerary Began to Change

One of my planned experiences in Fukuoka City was a traditional doll-making workshop. When it was cancelled, I was disappointed. It had been one of the activities around which I had organized the trip.

But the unexpected opening in my day led me to the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.

Instead of following the schedule I had created, I found myself exploring a collection filled with works and traditions from across Asia. I encountered instruments I had never expected to play and spent an afternoon immersed in something I might otherwise have missed entirely.

The cancellation had not ruined the day. It had simply redirected it.

Later, I made my way toward Fukuoka Tower.

It is one of the city’s best-known landmarks, and climbing it seemed like something I was supposed to do. But when I arrived, I realized that I did not actually want to go up.

For a moment, the familiar pressure appeared: You came all this way. You should do it.

But I didn’t.

I walked away.

That decision was small, but it felt strangely significant. I was beginning to recognize the difference between doing something because it genuinely interested me and doing it because an itinerary—or someone else’s list—had told me it mattered.

That evening, wandering without much of a plan, I entered a small wine bar. What could have been an unremarkable stop became an evening of conversation and unexpected warmth among strangers.

Fukuoka was already teaching me that a journey did not have to proceed according to plan to be worthwhile.

Sometimes the detour becomes the story.

Leaving the City Behind

After Fukuoka City, I continued to the coast of Munakata.

The pace changed immediately.

The streets were quieter. The sea felt close. There was space to rest without feeling that I should constantly be somewhere else.

Travel can easily become another form of performance. We wake early, cover as much ground as possible and measure a successful day by the number of places we managed to see.

But at the resort in Munakata, I allowed myself to slow down.

Resting was not a failure to travel properly. It was part of the journey.

During my time in Fukuoka Prefecture, I also made the longer excursion to Sakurai Shrine and Sakurai Futamigaura, where a white torii stands in the water before the sacred “wedded rocks.”

It was not the most convenient outing from Munakata. Reaching it required effort, time and a willingness to keep going.

But unlike the tower I had chosen not to climb, I wanted to make this journey.

The difference mattered.

Self-trust was not about always choosing the easiest option. Sometimes it meant walking away. Sometimes it meant resting. And sometimes it meant making the more difficult journey because something inside me genuinely wanted to see what waited at the end.

I was learning to ask a different question—not What should I do while I am here? but What am I drawn toward?

The Restaurant I Chose Because of Its Name

The following day, I stayed closer to the resort.

While looking on Google Maps for somewhere nearby to have lunch, one name caught my attention: Contadino Urabe.

I knew almost nothing about it. It was only about a twenty-minute walk from the hotel, and something about the name made me curious.

So I went.

From the outside, it did not announce itself as a destination. It was a tiny family restaurant inside a renovated home, run by a husband-and-wife team, with room for only a handful of guests.

“Contadino” means “farmer” in Italian, and almost immediately, the restaurant felt personal in a way that larger places rarely do.

I spoke mostly with the wife. She was wonderfully sweet and curious about me—who I was, where I had come from and what had brought me to this quiet corner of Munakata.

It felt less like being processed through a restaurant and more like being welcomed into someone’s world.

The meal unfolded over five courses. I no longer remember the official name of every dish, and the menu appeared to change regularly, but I remember how cared for everything felt.

There was an appetizer resembling pâté spread over crisp pieces of French bread, a velvety soup that may have been sweet potato or pumpkin, and a rich beef dish that reminded me of bourguignon.

And then there was the cheesecake.

The cheesecake alone was worth returning for.

I almost never visit the same restaurant twice while traveling. There are usually too many other places to discover and too little time.

But before leaving Munakata, I would walk back to Contadino Urabe and have lunch there all over again.

That is how exceptional it was.

The Cat on the Shrine Steps

After lunch, I continued walking.

On the map, Orihata Shrine sat on a wooded headland above the fishing community of Kanezaki, embraced by the Genkai Sea. Beyond the shrine, Google Maps showed a forest trail leading toward a distant worship point connected to Okinoshima.

I did not fully understand what I was walking toward. I had simply seen the location, noticed the land extending into the sea and thought:

I want to know what is there.

To reach Orihata Shrine, I had to climb a long flight of stone stairs.

There was no one else around.

No visitors. No voices above me.

Only the stairs, the trees—and a cat.

I do not know where it came from. But when I began climbing, it came with me.

Step after step, the cat escorted me upward. Sometimes it moved ahead. Sometimes it stopped and waited. Then, when I caught up, it continued.

The entire scene felt strangely unreal.

I was alone on a wooded headland above the sea, following a cat up the stone steps of an ancient shrine. It felt as though I had wandered into a Hayao Miyazaki film—the kind of story in which an ordinary animal appears without explanation and quietly leads the traveler across a threshold.

The cat stayed with me all the way to the top.

And then, having brought me there, it left.

It did not remain to be thanked. It did not ask for anything. It simply delivered me to the shrine and disappeared.

For reasons I still cannot fully explain, I began to cry.

I was not frightened or sad. I was deeply moved.

Perhaps it was the gentleness of being accompanied when I had expected to be alone. Perhaps it was the mystery of an animal appearing at precisely that moment and leaving only after I had reached the top.

Or perhaps something inside me had finally become quiet enough to be touched by an encounter I might otherwise have dismissed as insignificant.

I still do not know.

And I do not think I need to.

Revering What We Cannot Possess

Beyond the shrine, the trail continued through the forest toward the edge of the cape.

From this coast, people have long directed their reverence across the Genkai Sea toward Okinoshima, a sacred island associated with Munakata Taisha.

The practice of worshipping from afar is known as yōhai. It allows a sacred place to be acknowledged without being entered—revered without being possessed.

There was something striking about that idea.

So much of modern travel is built around access. We want to enter, climb, reach, photograph and claim proximity to the places we have crossed the world to see.

But here, the sacred remained beyond the horizon.

Distance did not diminish its meaning.

I had not begun the day searching for a lesson about reverence. I was simply following a trail I had noticed on a map.

Yet everything about the journey seemed to be asking me to loosen my grip: on plans, explanations and the need to possess every experience completely.

Some places can be honored without being conquered.

Some moments can be meaningful without being understood.

The Sky Opened

Eventually, the trees began to part.

Ahead of me stood a small, weathered concrete shelter overlooking the sea. It was simple and almost severe—not the kind of structure most people would cross a country to photograph.

But as I reached it, the sun was beginning to descend.

Light passed through the trees. The water started changing colour. The horizon softened.

I was still completely alone.

No tour group arrived. No one stepped in front of the view. There was no one beside me telling me where to look or when it was time to leave.

Then the sky became something I still struggle to describe.

Gold poured across the water. The clouds seemed to catch fire. Light entered the shelter and transformed everything around me.

The empty shrine, the cat leading me through the trees, the solitary trail and now this impossible sky—it all felt as though it had come straight from a Miyazaki film.

It no longer felt like a place I had found on a map.

It felt as though another world had briefly opened and, somehow, I had wandered into it.

The sunset did not merely impress me.

It left me speechless.

I began crying again, but this time the tears came with an almost unbearable sense of elation.

I felt so alive.

So fortunate to be standing there.

So astonished that a day assembled from little more than curiosity—a restaurant name, a point on a map and photographs of an unknown trail—had led me to this.

There are experiences that are beautiful because we anticipated them.

And then there are moments so far beyond anything we expected that, for a little while, the world no longer feels entirely real.

This was one of those moments.

All I could do was stand there, cry and receive it.

The Journey I Chose

On my final morning in Munakata, I returned to Contadino Urabe.

For once, I did not want something new.

I wanted to return to the little room where I had felt welcomed. I wanted another thoughtfully prepared lunch, another slice of that unforgettable cheesecake and the pleasure of being remembered by someone I had met only days earlier.

There is something special about returning to a place while you are still traveling. For a moment, you are no longer merely passing through.

You recognize the walk.

You know the door.

And someone on the other side recognizes you.

Returning was a way of honoring what the journey had already given me instead of constantly asking it to produce something else.

As I left Munakata and made my way back to Fukuoka City, I thought about the journey I had expected to have.

A cancelled workshop had led me somewhere unexpected.

A tower I chose not to climb gave me the freedom to wander elsewhere.

A small wine bar became an evening of warmth among strangers.

A restaurant name led me to an extraordinary meal.

A point on a map led me to an empty shrine.

A cat escorted me into what felt like another world.

And beyond the shrine, an unfamiliar trail opened onto a sunset so magnificent that I could do nothing but stand beneath it and weep from the joy of being alive.

None of those moments belonged to the perfect itinerary.

They happened because I allowed myself to respond to what was actually in front of me—to leave when something felt wrong, rest when I needed rest, follow what made me curious and return when I had already found something wonderful.

Self-trust does not always arrive as certainty.

Sometimes it is only a quiet preference: the feeling that you would rather turn left than right, walk away instead of enter, rest instead of perform or follow a path simply because you want to know where it leads.

We are often taught to distrust those impulses when we cannot explain them. We choose what is recommended, complete what we planned and try to make every journey efficient and easy to justify.

But Fukuoka showed me another way of traveling—one shaped less by obligation and more by attention.

The journey I remember was not the one I planned.

It was the one I chose, moment by moment, when I finally listened to myself.

In Fukuoka, that choice led me toward a welcoming room, an empty shrine, a mysterious cat and a sky that made me cry from the sheer elation of being alive beneath it.

I came to Fukuoka with plans.

I left with something far more valuable:

The memory of what happened when I trusted myself enough to change them.

Watch the full cinematic journey below:

https://youtu.be/Wj7s9G8b4Ls

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