Since I took my second trip to Kagoshima this week (one of the seven prefectures of Kyushu in Japan), I thought it would be a fun first flashback blog entry. Back in the summer of 2009, I had just finished studying in Spain for one month and flown over to Japan to visit some friends for a few weeks before starting up my next semester at my university. Prior to my visit, I had procured a JR Rail Pass (all you can ride Japanese trains for a week for about US$500 at the time), which only foreigners can get and only prior to entry in Japan. So in the middle of my week, I spent 3 days in Kyushu.
My first stop on my trip was to Beppu in Oita prefecture which is famous for hot springs. Among the hot springs present are the Jigoku Meguri (地獄巡り/literally: hell tour), 8 hot springs primarily meant for just looking at. The colors were various, some were red, some were blue, one had giant crocodiles swimming around in them. I unfortunately didn’t leave time for seeing all of them and only ended up seeing Umi Jigoku (海地獄/literally: Ocean Hell), Oniyama Jigoku (鬼山/literally: demon mountain hell/the crocodile hot spring), and Chinoike Jigoku (血の池地獄/literally: pond of blood hell) before I left Beppu.
My next stop was in Miyazaki city of Miyazaki prefecture. To get there I had to take a local train instead of shinkansen (新幹線/bullet train)as the east side of Kyushu at the moment is lacking a high speed train. Upon arriving late at Miyazaki, I visited Heiwadai Park (平和台/literally: peace tower). The primary reason of my visit was to see the Haniwa figures, these are ancient (~1500 years ago) terracotta clay burial figures, they piqued my interest as they are the inspiration to the gyroids in Nintendo’s Animal Crossing series. After the long day, I spent a few hours trying to find an internet café to sleep at and after leeching wifi from a McDonald’s, I found Cybac, which was my first of many times sleeping at that internet café chain. The next morning, I took the local train to Aoshima, one more stop in Miyazaki before leaving the prefecture. Aoshima is a small island accessible to pedestrians. The island has cultural significance as it has a shrine and is featured in some classic Japanese legends, but it also has some interesting geological rocks which you can see below. I didn’t stay long as there wasn’t much to do and I took the train out to the next prefecture on my stop, Kagoshima.
I visited Kagoshima for one reason, to quickly see my first volcano, Sakurajima (桜島/literally: cherry blossom island). Sakurajima is an active volcano and when I visited its base I could even see huge clouds of gray smoke rising up. To get there I walked from Kagoshima Chuo station to the ferry port and had to take a ferry across to Sakurajima, where I spent an hour diddling around at a volcanic rock park before heading moving on to my next stop, but before moving on I got a crepe from a vending machine that I had seen. From Kagoshima Chuo station, I was able to start using shinkansen as the western side of Kyushu does feature a shinkansen, not only was it a shinkansen, but it was the Pokémon Tsubame Shinkansen, which made me pretty happy.
My last stop in my Kyushu tour was Nagasaki to see the peace park. I arrived at night, so I again spent a few hours trying to find wifi (Japan wasn’t and still isn’t a very wifi friendly country), before eventually giving up and going to a Koban (交番/police box) and asking for help to find another Cybac for me to stay at, after I got the directions, I took the street car to my destination and slept there for the night. In the morning I walked out to see the I enjoyed the one-legged torii (arch) that was knocked down by the atomic bomb. I then continued on to the Nagasaki Peace Park. A year prior to this visit, I had visited the Hiroshima Peace Park and found that it was much more peaceful and people were much friendlier, I feel that the Nagasaki Peace Park was much more… sad and solemn, for whatever reason. After finishing the peace park/sculpture park, I walked back to Nagasaki Station and took the train out of Kyushu to Kobe.
Length of trip: 3 days (Tue, Aug. 4— Thu, Aug. 6, 2009), 2 nights.
New cities visited: Beppu, Miyazaki, Kagoshima, Nagasaki.
New prefectures visited: Oita, Miyazaki, Kagoshima, Nagasaki.