Kyushu Trip

In the past year, I have learned 2 important things about traveling in Japan:

1- Asking Japanese people "what should I eat when I visit ____?" yields much more useful/interesting results than asking "what should I do/see when I visit ____?"

It is my impression (largely influenced by the non-stop food on Japanese television) that sightseeing is something that Japanese tourists do to pass time between meals. Every region, prefecture, city and neighborhood in Japan claims to be *famous* for one type of food or another. For example: the neighborhood that I live in has *famous* sauce katsu (a type of pork cutlet), sembei (rice cracker) and manju (a type of Japanese sweet) shops. How my silly little neighborhood is home to not one, but THREE *famous* shops is a bit of a mystery to me, but probably wouldn't surprise a Japanese person (which makes me question the over-usage of *famous*). Another example: Osaka is famous for takoyaki (a type of battered octopus ball... it's better than it sounds!) and okonomiyaki (a... dinner pancake? it's cooked at your table on a wide, griddle-like surface and features seafood, pork and veggies in a non-sweet pancake-ish batter). I'm sure that Osaka has many other things to be proud of, but if you come back from vacation and tell your Japanese co-workers that you went to Osaka, they don't say "how was the new aquarium?" or "did you visit Osaka Castle?" Instead, 100% of the time, they will ask "did you have takoyaki/okonomiyaki??" It's the only thing that matters.

2- If you forget to ask a Japanese person what to eat, don't count on Lonely Planet to have the answers. Stop in the train station gift shop and look at the regional Hello Kitty charms, as they will give you all of the information that you need.

Starting in 2004, to celebrate her 30th birthday, Hello Kitty charms were made to commemorate the specialties of every region, prefecture, and famous city/neighborhood in Japan. Gunma Prefecture's Kitties feature Hello Kitty nestled in a cabbage (a famous Gunma export?) and wearing a raven costume (the crows are really big and scary in Gunma?). A city like Osaka has many Kitties, including Kitty in a takoyaki costume and Kitty making okonomiyaki. These big cities have dozens of different Hello Kitty charms and give an interesting overview as to what the ares is *famous* for.

-----------------------------------------------






Kyushu was a whirlwind 4-day trip through 5 cities, with at least 20 hours spent on trains/planes. It was exhausting, but I'm so happy that we went! Here's a brief rundown, tailored largely to the 2 principles of travel explained above:









Thursday, November 2nd -- Nagasaki
*famous foods*
Nagasaki champon and sara udon--both feature a gooey mixture of seafood and veggies over noodle soup or crispy, dried noodles (in that order)
Castella--a cousin to pound cake, borrowed from Portuguese traders in the 19th C.

*featured Hello Kitties*
Kitty in a castella costume, inside some fruit/bean/seed (we had no idea what it was), inside a tulip... and a dozen others that I don't remember

Nagasaki City is now remembered best as the second (and hopefully the last) city to suffer the destruction of an atomic bombing, but before WWII it was home to the largest Church in all of Asia and was the only major Japanense port open to European trade during Japan's isolationist period... hence the tulips, castella cake and Christianity.
The Peace Park was much bigger than I'd expected and was filled with statues/sculptures from all over the world. It was fun to wander through them, looking at how the various countries decided to represent their hopes for peace. Most memorably, though, I thought that the sculptor's explanation of the main statue was really interesting... so I'm sharing it with you:
"After experiencing that nightmarish war,
that blood-curdling carnage,
that unendurable horror,
Who could walk away without praying for peace?
This statue was created as a signpost in the
cause of global harmony.
Standing ten meters tall,
it conveys the profundity of knowledge and
the beauty of health and virility.
The right hand points to the atomic bomb,
the left hand points to peace,
and the face prays deeply for the victims of war.
Transcending the barriers of race
and evoking the qualities of both Buddha and God,
it is a symbol of the greatest determination
ever known in the history of Nagasaki
and the highest hope of all mankind."
--Seibu Kitamura, Spring 1955
We wandered to the church that was once the largest in Asia, but from more than 1/2 mile from the bomb's hypocenter was completely destroyed, and from there to the hypocenter itself.
I'm a huge sucker for all of the paper cranes (they're so beautiful!), so I took a million pictures.
Then we made our way to the atomic bomb museum. The subject matter is obviously very serious and I was anticipating a solemn experience, but within minutes of our arrival, a school trip of about 200 elementary school students rolled in behind us, split into teams and armed with treasure hunt-style worksheets. I literally stopped walking and stood still in the middle of the first exhibition room as they rushed in and filled the open space around me like water. For about 5 seconds I was annoyed, wondering how I was going to get close enough to read anything in this sea of 9-year old children... but then I overheard them "whispering" to each other about whether or not they should practice their English on me. These are always the funniest conversations to overhear, because they usually feature a giggling rehearsal of what they might say: "hello. *giggle* how are you? I'm fine, thank you. And you?" *more giggling* In the end, I did my best impression of an approachable friendly person --eye contact, smile, small wave-- and ended up squatting down, talking to a group of school children in an excited blend of Japanese and English as some of the most gruesome war images I've ever seen flashed on the walls around us. Looking back on it, it's a bizarre memory that makes sense only in the context of my experiences in Japan. Sometimes it's easy to forget how old this country/culture is, especially when compared to America, and it's also easy to forget that only 60 years ago it was a country ravaged by war. Thinking about how much the world has changed during those 60 years is almost overwhelming, as I'm sure the bomb-survivors whose stories are echoed throughout that museum never imagined that their grandchildren would find themselves on a school field trip, speaking English to an American 20-something whose own grandparents include a Japanese war-survivor, as well as 2 American soldiers who served on the Pacific front of WWII. It's almost surreal to consider how small the world has become.
Anyway, after the museum we went in search for food (how's that for anti-climax?), deciding on *famous* Nagasaki champon with castella for dessert.
And wrapped up the day with a nighttime view of the city from atop Mt. Inasa.


Friday, November 3rd -- Kumamoto and Aso
We were on a train by 7:30am and checked out the city of Kumamoto in a 2-hour sprint. Due to the shortage of time, we decided to focus on Kumamoto's main attraction--the castle.
It was a pretty cool castle (though I think Himeji was better) and we got to see some cute kids visiting the local shrine for the holiday in November when 3-, 5- and 7-year old children get dressed up in cute clothes, and well... visit the shrine (maybe there's more to it than that, but that's all I know). Then we caught the trolley back to Kumamoto station and jumped on another train to Aso.

*famous foods*
milk

*featured Hello Kitties*
Kitty in a dairy cow costume

Mt. Aso is a 20km wide volcanic caldera, containing not only a city, but several mountains, cinder cones and stratovolcanoes. Japan has record of 167 eruptions from the volcano Naka-dake between 553 and 1993, making it the record holder for "most explosive eruptions" of any volcano in the world. These mountains/volcanoes seem to jump out of the otherwise flat landscape and vary dramatically from smooth, rolling green mountains to jagged, tree-less piles of rock.
We went to the top of Mt. Naka (which was covered in dry, red rock) by gondola and peeked into a crater of steaming blue water. The stench of sulfur was shocking, but Japanese tourists were delighting in buying powdered sulfur from the volcano to add to their bathwater at home (I should note that many natural hot spring baths have a similar smell, and sulfuric water is considered both healing and soothing).
We ran around taking pictures of the mountains at dusk, then caught our bus back to the train station.

Saturday, November 4th -- Beppu
*famous foods*
kabosu--a type of citrus fruit (that I'd never heard of before arriving in Beppu)
mushrooms and other mountain-y vegetables
hot spring-type foods--eggs boiled in hot spring water, etc.

*featured Hello Kitties*
Kitty enjoying a hot spring bath, dressed as a devil who is enjoying a hot spring bath, in a kabosu costume, in a pink monkey costume holding a kabosu (apparently Beppu is famous for rounding up all of the local monkeys who were terrorizing rural homes, sticking them in a "monkey park" and calling it a tourist attraction. They have sent Beppu monkeys all over the world as gifts to other countries... kind of weird)

Beppu is a *famous* hot spring city, which is not at all uncommon in Japan. Japanese people LOVE to visit hot springs, so it seems like there are a million regions that are *famous* hot spring getaways (including western Gunma). What makes Beppu stand out is that many of the pools are too hot for bathing, with water ranging from 80-100ºC (about 200ºF), so they have been dubbed "the hells" of Beppu and harnessed as a tourist attraction.
What's amazing about these hells is that they are all within walking distance from each other, but the content of the water is dramatically different at each location. There's red, cloudy whiteish-blue and chlorine-blue water, plus the various colors of the mud water (which produces huge gurgling bubbles) and the hell that features a geyser.
At each hell, there is a place where the water is cooled through pipes and run into a small bath where you can soak your feet in the different types of mineral water.
After visiting the hells, we went further up into the mountains to take a bath in a cooler version of the gurgling mud baths. It was definitely an interesting experience because the water was somewhere between the consistency of water and mud, but the mud didn't just sink to the bottom of the pool (if that makes sense)... I'm not sure how it works. Apparently it's great for your skin.
One of the things that I liked most about Beppu is that the steam from the various hot springs fills the skyline in every direction, seeming to come out of even the most random places, and is visible day or night.

Sunday, November 5th -- Fukuoka/Hakata

*famous foods*
mentaiko--a type of fish eggs, usually spicy
tonkotsu Ramen--my favorite ramen!

*featured Hello Kitties*
Kitty in a mentaiko costume, Kitty making and eating ramen, in a flower of some sort, wearing a silly festival hat that's covered in flowers...and a dozen or so more that I can't remember

We arrived in Fukuoka on Saturday night and had a mini-adventure trying to find our hotel for the evening... it was my first experience at a capsule hotel and we were pretty excited about it (they're usually only for men).
Having gone out to explore the city that night, we were exhausted and decided to sleep in on Sunday. By the time we woke up, showered and packed our bags, it was time for lunch. After a bit of wandering, we stumbled onto a ramen shop (which turned out to be famous?) and had a delicious bowl of tonkotsu ramen.
Then we took a loop of the shopping district and headed back to the airport, where we bought omiyage for our schools and caught our flight home to Tokyo.

...an incredibly long post for a very busy weekend!!