"Everyone wants to head west," an architect friend told me recently. "It's natural. That's where the sun sets, and where thoughts of relaxation turn to at the end of the day."
This may explain why the Itoshima Peninsula, in the west of Fukuoka, has seen a population increase of between 15-27 percent over the last 10 years, and a boom in leisure activities. On summer weekends, cars inch bumper-to-bumper along narrow Route 202, which leads to this peaceful, green pocket of countryside.
Just 15 km from the city, the Itoshima Peninsula has white beaches and a hinterland of lush bamboo forest, rice fields and rolling hills. Farmers have probably been in Itoshima since the Yayoi Period, when the Chinese historic text "Wei Zhi" described a land called "Ito" in northwest Kyushu.