Kumamoto

Kumamoto

Yesterday was great. We decided to have a relaxed day without so much travel, so we just went to Kumamoto to see the castle. The trip took around half an hour, and shortly after, we arrived by tram at the castle.

Kumamoto Castle was originally built during 1601—1607, but most of the buildings today are a reconstruction from the 1960's, since the castle was burned down during the siege in 1878, in the Satsuma Rebellion following the Meiji Restoration.

These are the events on which the movie The last Samurai was based, although loosely: In the actual historical events, the rebels had no problems with modern military equipment and only resorted to swords and arrows when they finally ran out of ammunition. In fact, the rebel leader, Saigō Takamori, was instrumental in shaping the Imperial forces, which he would later fight. The samurai did however have a problem with what they saw as an erosion of traditional values and the Samurai honor code, as well as a loss of their privileges in the modern, non-feudal society.

After visiting the castle we took a stroll through the Botanical Garden and finally, somewhat unplanned, ended up at a baseball game. It was really fun, although "our" team finally lost by 8–6.

We tried to find the Shimada Art Museum, which keeps Miyamoto Musashi-related art, but failed and instead asked for directions to Honmyoji, a big shrine, close to which the museum is supposed to be located. We took a look at the shrine and then tried anew to find the museum. We ended up asking for directions at a 7-11, where they told us that the museum actually is closed until October.

Consulting our map, we tried to find our way to a cool pub we read about in our guide book, but by confusing our position and directions we finally ended up close to the railway station. We took the chance to go home early and get our laundry done, so we could sleep early before our continued journey the next day.

As it would turn out, the extra time was well needed. We put in our laundry and went for a walk and a dinner. When we came back, the machines were full with water and hadn't used any of the detergent. Consulting the wwwjdic, we concluded that our guesses about the workings of the machine's settings had indeed been correct and
Erik tried the exact same settings again, which worked perfectly. I altered some of the settings, and ended up having to choose "empty machine of water" mode manually. To be on the safe side, I put the dry tumbler on for three hours.

We went to sleep really worried about what kind of a sight would meet us at the dry tumbler in the morning, but actually everything was ok, and after breakfast we could get packing and check out. On our way to the train station I only had to go back to the room once, to get the papers with all our bookings and maps. :-)

Now we're on the train to Fukuoka. We couldn't book any seats for the trip, and the non-booked car is full, but that's ok, it's just a one-hour trip. We made sure to book seats for the longer trip to Ōsaka tonight, though.

Mount Aso

Mount Aso

Today's trip took us to Mount Aso, the largest active volcano in Japan. We also finally got the chance to ride a train completely free of English translations. And to decipher the railroad tables. They are surprisingly understandable once you learn to recognize the relevant kanji.

The view from the train window was excellent the entire way, once we switched trains in Kumamoto and started going east. A bit difficult to take pictures of, I'm afraid. Too many railroad electricity lines and passing trees. I shot some movies, maybe I'll get around to distilling some useful panoramas out of them one day. :-)

We arrived in Aso just in time to miss the bus. While waiting for the next one we walked around the village, which didn't take long, and tried to take some pictures of the peaks. Then we decided to go to a café and have a delicious chocolate parfait. After ordering, we realized that the bus was leaving soon and we would miss it unless we cancelled the order. We excused ourselves thoroughly and explained that we were in a hurry, but the waitress and the kitchen personnel excused themselves even more, which made us feel quite bad about ourselves.

On the way up, the bus took a ten minute photo break, where we could get some great pictures of the Kijima peak and the Kusasenri ("thousand kilometers of grass") field. The Volcano Museum was then just around the corner.

Japanese trivia: Neko Dake (根子岳) means "Neko Peak", the eastern and most cool-looking of the five peaks in the Aso crater, while neko dake (猫だけ) means "just a cat". No difference in pronunciation. Japanese is a wonderful language for wordplay. :-)

In retrospect we are still wondering if we should have gone directly to the still active Naka Peak instead of stopping at the museum, but there's a 1 km safety distance, so our official version will be that we chose to see the live footage at the museum instead to get a better view. We wanted to do both, but when we were finished at the museum everything was closing and we had to catch the last bus.

The Japanese language is starting to work smoother. Some words and phrases are slowly coming back, others are being learned, and like I said above I'm starting to recognize the kanji of the important place names, among other things. Before you start accusing me of hubris I want to make clear that I have no illusions of being fluent in the language after being here for two weeks. :-)

Time to sleep. Tomorrow we will go to Kumamoto and see the castle, which is supposed to have a wonderful cherry tree garden.

Kyūshū

We finally arrived at Nagasu Station, Kumamoto, Kyūshū yesterday evening. The hotel is wonderful: It's cheap (€18/person/night, breakfast costs €2/person), it's nice and clean, and it offers free Internet access! We didn't sleep until 2 last night, which means we're still dead tired. I wouldn't call it jet lag, rather we're-too-stupid-to-sleep-when-we-should-syndrome. (Oh, btw, I didn't sleep much on the train yesterday, of course, I was too busy organizing the photos and writing the blog ...)

Now it's time for breakfast and then we'll head out for Aso-san, the biggest active volcano in Japan.

First night in Japan

Ueno, Tokyo

Clouds

Writing this on the Hikari train from Ōsaka to Fukuoka.

Yesterday we left Hong Kong for Tōkyō. Things went surprisingly smoothly. By talking to one JR representative after another we came closer and closer to the JR office that could give us our rail passes. They also booked seats on the NEX for us. One hour later we were at Tōkyō Station. After trying for 15 minutes to understand where to find the local express train we gave up and settled for the normal local train, which took us to Ueno in less than 15 minutes. :-)

At Ueno station we chose an exit on random and found that it had taken us to the west side of the station, just like we wanted. We went into a park and consulted the map for a while, with the help of a friendly old man, and finally followed our initial guess anyway. After a small detour we arrived at the position that our map told us was Yamanaka Ryōkan.

We walked around the area a bit to find the address. We would finally end up right where we started, which was indeed the position of the ryōkan if you would just care to look around you instead of focusing too much on the map...

Projects for the evening:

1. Money
2. Food
3. Internet café

After unsuccessfully working on problem 1 we went on to problem 2 at the Hard Rock café. There we met a Swedish couple, who explained that international banks have international ATMs. We asked the police at Ueno Station, who gave us directions to a bank which we then failed to find, but we found a post office, the ATM of which actually accepted our foreign cards.

We browsed the whole of Asakusa for an Internet café, but finally gave up and decided to try playing some pachinko, which is a flipper-like game, where the lack of flippers is compensated by the use of hundreds of balls simultaneously. Skilled players actually win more hundreds of balls, which they can then exchange for cash. Erik won five balls, I won none. Then we worked our way back to the ryōkan.

We woke up an hour late, because my telephone, which served as our alarm clock, was still set for Hong Kong time. We both agreed that the extra hour of sleep had been much needed and ended up leaving three hours later than planned and arriving four hours later than planned. A friendly Japanese English teacher helped us explain this to the hotel.

First stay in Hong Kong!

Hong Kong arrival

Wow, two days behind us and already so much to report! Friday went great, the plane didn't leave until 20:40, so we had a nice slow day fixing the last few things missing, like buying the travel adapters for all our electronics equipment. :-)

No mishaps on our trip, everything worked well, and finally on Saturday WY met us at HK airport and took us to our hotel, the Gold Coast Hotel. Our room is amazing, with sea view and a balcony that is bigger than my living room in Linköping. Feels sad to have to leave it tomorrow morning – none of the other hotels and hostels will be this luxurious.

On the first night we went for food in the area where WY spent the later part of her childhood, and we visited a wonderful park there. Slept really late on Sunday and went for fika/brunch at the R66 revolving restaurant (one revolution per 66 minutes), which offers a wonderful view of HK and surroundings. Later we went to the Peak. We arrived a little too late for watching the sunset, but we still got some great pictures of the night-time city lights. Well, at least the others did. Lessons learned: Always bring the spare battery.

On our way home we spent an hour in a game arcade... Then another hour, then another. We played first a drumming game (think Guitar Hero, only bongo drums instead – crazy fun!), then a tambourine game (adds the dimension of choreography to the drumming game concept) and finally got addicted to a dancing game (strictly choreography). We finally left, hungry and exhausted, and went to a noddle restaurant to further develop our chopstick skills. :-)

When we came home, I got an SMS from my sister, warning me about the earthquake in Japan. Luckily for us, the earthquake was in Ishikawa, not Tokyo, and the airline homepage says our flight is still available and on schedule.

Oops, 04:45 already, and we need to get up at 05:00 to catch the plane. Oh well, I can sleep on the 8h train to Kumamoto on Tuesday...

Off we go!

First post!

Ok, done the packing, time to take a shower and have some breakfast and then move out and do some last-minute shopping. See you on the other side!