The Least Useful Guide to Fukuoka

Recently I started buying (not borrowing or subscripting—this is the point!) printed magazines again for the first time in these nearly two decades.

I used to be a magazine enthusiast in my 20-30s. I would buy a magazine and get on the commuting bus every morning.

Even while I lived in a foreign country, I still read magazines in the local language, which now I think beyond my linguistic proficiency. But I just loved flipping through them like a local.

For the past several years, however, I have been consumed with someone’s blog, Yahoo! News and online magazines, not paying anything for what I read.  

Then one day this year, I bought a magazine on food using a discount coupon at a local supermarket’s magazine stand and spellbound by its sophisticated graphics and well-curated contents. It is worth what have paid, I thought.

Since then I have tended to drop in at the magazine section when I go to bookstores and found myself buying an increasing number of magazines every month. 

Objectively looking at my recent buy (picture above), I realized I am no longer a 20-something. The magazines I used to buy in the 20^th century featured clothing, gossips and how to improve my looks. Whereas what I have recently bought introduce how to get along with an aging body, eat beans and find a good over the counter drugs and good chemist…the contents I would never even dream of 30 years ago...