Junot Díaz on Fukuoka, Japan's Next Greater Food City

Photo courtesy Getty Images Fukuoka began—the way all important love affairs should—with a meal. This was on my first trip to Japan, way back in the ’90s. My flight landed after supper, and by the time I hauled myself from Narita to Shimokitazawa, that coolest of Tokyo districts, I was straight starving, so my boy Michi took me to his local ramen-ya.