NAKASU
Nakasu is the major entertainment district of Fukuoka. Nakasu is
very popular with the western population of Fukuoka and tourists.
Nakasu (中洲 ) is the entertainment district which exists between the
sandbank of the Naka River (那珂川 ,Nakagawa) and the Hakata River (博多川
,Hakatagawa) in Fukuoka City, Fukuoka
Prefecture,
Japan. It is
named after a popular, but very short-lived, entertainment quarter
of Edo, which existed in the late 18th century. The name "Nakasu" is
translated as "the island in the middle" in English, and as the name
indicates, the geography of Nakasu is shaped as the insular sandbank
between two rivers.
Nakasu is one of the major entertainment districts in
Japan, and one of the
largest entertainment district in the western Japan area next to
Osaka. The number of restaurants and stores
including adult-entertainment establishments is around 3,500, and over
60,000 people visit Nakasu in every night. Nakasu is also the home to a
number of fashionable restaurants. Notable features in Nakasu are the scene
of neon signs from the Fukuhaku Deai Bridge (福博であい橋) , Yatai stalls along
the Naka River, and the streets with a lot of adult-entertainment
establishments. Once some fans of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, a Japanese
baseball team, have dived into the river from the Fukuhaku Deai Bridge when
the team has won the championship. The nearest subway station from Nakasu is
the Nakasu-Kawabata Station of the Fukuoka City Subway.
In 1600, Kuroda Nagamasa, a daimyo of the Fukuoka-Han at
that time, created Nakasu to connect between current Chūō-ku and Hakata-ku
by building two bridges over the rivers at the sandbank: Higashi Nakajima
Bridge and Nishi Nakajima Bridge (currently is Shōwa Street) . Present day
of Nakasu has 18 bridges in total, 7 of them are built at the side of the
Chūō-ku, and 11 at the side of the Hakata-ku. Once Nakasu was used to thrive
with the Tamaya, a department store of long standing, and movie theatres,
although the center of commerce has moved currently to the Tenjin and Daimyō
districts in Chūō-ku.
After the establishment of a shopping complex, the Canal City Hakata at
neighbouring Sumiyoshi district in 1996, the areas of Tenjin, Nakasu, and
Hakata Station, all of which are located in the middle of the place between
the Tenjin district and Canal City Hakata, are unified. The redevelopment of
unification with adjacent Kawabata district is also in progress. On March
29, 2002, the Nakasu Special Investigator, a squad of the Fukuoka
Prefectural Police, was formed and has patrolled to prevent violation. A
huge commercial complex, the "gate's" was opened in 2006, at the site the
Tamaya was located.
Article based on
Wikipedia article and used under the
GNU Free Documentation License)
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