About Fukuoka Now

Welcome to the Fukuoka Now website!
The site debuted back in 1999 as a companion to our print magazine, Fukuoka Now, which debuted on Dec. 25, 1998, and continued to be published monthly until April 2020, when we stopped publishing due to the pandemic. In the meantime, we continue to create and share information and original content on our website, SNS channels, and YouTube.

Fukuoka Now provides information on local news, travel, food and drink, events, festivals for the benefit of locals. We also introduce and support members of the international community and their projects. It’s equally popular with tourists who value it highly as a source of well-researched information editor by media professionals with many years of living experience here.

• Company name: Fukuoka Now Ltd.
• Representative Director: Nicholas Szasz
• Head office: Chuo-ku, Fukuoka City
• Establishment: Dec. 25, 1998 (founding: Jul. 1999)
• Main business: multilingual media publishing, reporting, editorial, editing, content planning, marketing, promotion, event and tour planning and implementation (Fukuoka Prefecture Governor Registered Travel Service Arranger No. 45)

If you have comments or suggestions for us, please use this contact form.

Concept

To inform, guide, and entertain residents of and visitors to Fukuoka and Kyushu with original and carefully curated contents.

Sponsorship

Fukuoka Now magazine and this website are published by Fukuoka Now Ltd., a privately owned and registered company in Fukuoka City. The owner and founder, Nick Szasz, is a native of Toronto, Canada, and has lived in Japan since the mid-eighties. The magazine and this site are financed exclusively through advertising revenue.

Community

We create opportunities for our readers of all nationalities to meet each other and us through small and large-scale events. Feel free to interact with us on SNS and YouTube.

Background on Fukuoka Now magazine

Fukuoka Now was first published on Dec. 25, 1998. It began as a single sheet of A1-size paper printed on both sides and folded into 16 A5 pages. One side featured a map of the city and an event calendar. The other side ran reports on restaurants, bars, and places to visit in Fukuoka. Fukuoka Now was always bilingual, English and Japanese. In our third year, we added Korean and Chinese, and later years saw special pages in French, Spanish and Portuguese. At one point in time, we regularly had articles in six languages! From April 2011 to March 2012, Fukuoka Now was published in an English and Korean bilingual format. From April 2012, we return to our earliest roots as a 16 page English and Japanese bilingual monthly magazine. The next significant change was in July 2015. Reflecting the enormous increase of visitors from overseas, we rebuilt the magazine to become an excellent resource for tourists with all contents in English, Chinese and Korean. Special issues were produced coinciding with large scale international events such as:

July 2016 “Lions Clubs Annual International Convention”
November 2016 “The America’s Cup World Series”
May 2019 “G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting in Fukuoka”
October 2019 “Rugby World Cup”

While the number of inbound tourists continued to climb right up until the pandemic, we decided to return to our roots. In April 2020, we resumed in a bilingual English and Japanese format with contents that appeal more to residents and travelers looking to delve deeper. The magazine is currently on a hiatus until lifestyles normalize from the effects of the pandemic.

▷You can view all 256 issues here: Fukuoka Now back issues in PDF.

Now Map

Our trilingual (English, Chinese, Korean) free city map which debuted in 2009, and is still the most popular foreign language printed tool for tourists and residents with over 330,000 copies distributed annually. Published twice a year, (April and September) you can find copies at all tourist information centers and most hotels in Fukuoka City. Publication was suspended following the 2020 Spring/Summer issue in April 2020. We plan to resume as soon as inbound tourism recovers.
Now Map – Multilingual Free Map for Fukuoka

Now Events

Fukuoka Now’s regular event is the “Fukuoka Canada Day Party,” celebrating Canada’s National Day (July 1).

Three or four times a year Fukuoka Now produces large-scale social events. Attendance average 800. Usually, 30~40% of the attendees are non-Japanese and the rest are local Japanese. These events are an excellent opportunity to make new friends and meet others in Fukuoka’s international community.
Past events can be viewed here.

SNS (Facebook, Twitter & Instagram)

We share information daily on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In the event of a disaster, we are one of the most frequently accessed local area sites.

https://www.facebook.com/fukuokanow
Fukuoka Now on Facebook – Updated daily.

https://twitter.com/FukuokaNow
Fukuoka Now on Twitter – Updated daily.

https://www.instagram.com/fukuokanow/
Fukuoka Now Instagram

Connecting Kyushu and the World: Kyushu Live!

Kyushu Live is a new addition to Fukuoka Now since January 2021. Approximately once a week, sometimes more often, we share hour-long live streams of narrated (English) walks through areas of interest around Kyushu. Our goal is to connect people around the world interested in Kyushu in real-time. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/kyushulive/

Advertising

We also offer ads on our online media including banners and paid publicity mentions and pages. Contact a sales representative in English or Japanese for more details.

Fukuoka Now Ltd.
Contact us via email: contact (@)fukuoka-now.com

Last Updated: Aug 27, 2021

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