The Hakata Port Tower makes a nice little destination:


You can whizz up in the lift to the observation deck, and then take in the exhibitions on the ground floor -- all for nothing:








This unassuming monument has a fascinating story:


According to the signboard:

"At Hakata Port at the end of WWII in 1945, approximately 1.39 million Japanese repatriates were received from Northeast China and the Korean Peninsula, and 500 thousand foreign nationals in Japan at the time were sent off to their homes in China and the Korean Peninsula."

What a lot of tragedy and heartbreak those simple words encompass... But the signboard continues:

"This monument is erected with the wish for eternal peace and to continually remind the coming generations that the significant role of this largest-scale repatriation port in Japan shall not be forgotten, [and] the lessons of this war which caused excruciating pain to many people in the Asian Pacific shall be learned, so that the same disastrous experience will not be repeated."

Amen to that...

In the grounds of the Tower, there's also a simple little shrine: