Hita

If you have a daughter, you might like to bring her to Hita during href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doll_Festival">Girls' Day aka Hina-matsuri on March 3. On that day, around 200 of the The Kusano family's Hina Dolls are displayed at the oldest house in town. The old houses along Mameda-machi and Kuma-machi also open their doors to invite visitors to view their collection.





I visited Hita because I wanted to see the impressive doll collection in Mameda(the central area of town). Even though it was after the Girls' festival, you can still view the dolls in many of the souvenir shops around town.

In Japan the citizens are strong advocates for Road & Traffic Safety. In the different towns, the message maybe the same but the means of promotion is often different! While visiting Hita, an added bonus was that I managed to catch sight of a vintage car parade! The Road Safety Flags given out to residents and tourists served two purposes 1)Promotion of Traffic Safety 2)For them to support the drivers when they drove past. I am not too sure if this parade is an annual affair, but I caught sight of it on 10 April at around 10.30am. If you would like to catch the parade, do give the tourist centre a ring to confirm the details before heading there.

Vintage Car Parade







*Beer drinkers might like to head to the Sapporo Beer factory. There is a guided tour for visitors followed by a tasting session. Kanpai!

You might like to visit Hita during these periods:
1)Gion Festival (First Sunday after July 20th)
2)Tenryo Festival (Third weekend in October)
3)From July to November, catch sight of fishermen erecting bamboo fish traps in the Mikuma river. A must eat during this season is the grilled Ayu fishes.

Getting There
From JR Hakata Station, board the Yufuin-no-Mori Express to JR Hita station (approx 78mins) I have taken a number of bullet and ordinary trains, but this was the first time that the stewardess came round with props!