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. Remember: This was before there was any Ippudo NYC. Before Totto. Before Jin. I’d never had real ramen in my life, but that simple bowl of Hakata-style tonkotsu—the pork-bone broth of your dreams—just tore open my brain, my soul, my tongue. Afterward, in a state of jetlagged exaltation, I swore to myself that, no matter what, I would go to Fukuoka, which Michi had identified as the birthplace of the ramen we had just eaten. Yes, that first night in Shimokitazawa, under the lights of the old train station (now demolished), I swore a sacred ramen oath.

Turns out I suck at sacred ramen oaths, however, because over the years I visited Japan 13 more times and never once made it to Fukuoka. What can I tell you? Something, it seems, always came up: trips up north, trips down the coast, a love affair with Osaka, with Kyoto, with Tokyo—always Tokyo. In the end, I never made it farther south than Miyajima.

And yet despite everything, Fukuoka seemed to stay in the picture. Close friends visited the city and brought back glowing reports and even better photos. An ex-girlfriend, Dominicana, revealed out of nowhere that she had visited the city in the ’80s and loved it. Monocle named it one of the most livable cities in the world. And then, weirdest of all, in 2010 the Dominican superstar Juan Luis Guerra dropped his single “Bachata en Fukuoka.” Legend has it that JLG had gone to Fukuoka to play a gig and was so blown away by the Japanese audience—by their energy and by the fact that they knew all the words to his songs and could actually dance bachata—that he recorded the song in Fukuoka’s honor. “Bachata en Fukuoka” became a number one hit in the Latin market, and just like that, Fukuoka entered the Dominican lexicon, guaranteeing that even my country-ass relatives know that Fukuoka is a city in Japan. (It’s a good song, too.) Anyway, I took that shit as a sign. And yet clearly I must not be big on signs, either, because another four trips to Japan passed before “Bachata en Fukuoka” came on one last time and I had finally had it. Enough, I thought. Enough. I bought my tickets and, nearly 20 years after the whole Fukuoka affair began, it was on.

And now that I’ve been, I can say in my best public service voice: Folks, please don’t be like me—go to Fukuoka as soon as possible.

With its canals and river walks and nighttime neon spectacle, Fukuoka is the kind of place that inspires songs, that makes latecomers like me wish we had visited sooner. The town is the perfect size for taking in: The weather is salubrious; the inhabitants are both welcoming and famously handsome (Fukuokan women recently ranked third hottest after Akita’s and Kyoto’s, according to a national survey); and if the masses of Korean and Chinese shoppers are any metric (they were snapping up everything from the latest PlayStations to multiple Bao Bao Issey Miyake bags), the retail options are endless. There are cool museums and some Yayoi Kusama and Keith Haring sculptures and even a Rem Koolhaas–designed housing complex. Just outside the city stands one of the loveliest Shinto shrines in all of Japan, Dazaifu Tenmangu, the final resting place of Japan’s great brain, poet-scholar Sugawara Michizane, a.k.a. Tenjin, the god of scholarship. Throw in Hakata Bay, around which Fukuoka has grown like a lobster claw, and the nearby beaches and easy access to Korea, and you can understand why the city is a favorite of both travel cognoscenti and bachateros.