In a few minutes we would leave behind Kyushu Island where we were defeated by the cold and the strong wind and the occasional rain.
Our first stop In Kyushu was Nagasaki after travelling all the way from Osaka. That was about 4 hours on the trains. The attraction? Well, it’s a port city and it was where the Americans dropped the second atomic bomb which finally bent the knees of the Imperial Army. Reading the exhibits at the museum later, I discovered that the reason the Americans wanted to defeat Japan urgently was to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding it’s territory.
The weather was not good in Nagasaki. Cold and wet most of the time. We only made 3 or 4 distinct stops. First was Glover Garden which was within walking distance from the hotel, seeing it lighted up at night. We learned about a guy named Glover and a few other foreigners who contributed to the industrial development in Nagasaki. Glover Garden is a pleasant place with views of the harbour as well. It is also I think the only garden I have been to with escalators to bring visitors to the top and then work our way down on foot. The buildings in the garden combined colonial and Japanese architectural elements and were originally the homes of the expatriates sitting pretty on the hill.
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| My wife's dream house, at Glover Garden, Nagasaki |
Our next stop was Chinatown for dinner. We had one of the best fried rice ever. And a bowl of quite nice noodles they call champon here. Lots of cabbage and seafood in very nice soup with the noodles almost like the yellow noodles that we buy at the markets back home. As I said, it was cold and walking around at night is not much fun unless you are hunting for drinking holes of which there appeared to be many. The Japanese have an affinity for alcohol and companionship.
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| Best fried rice in Chinatown, Nagasaki |
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| The Peace Park ... |
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| ... still had some nice fall colours. |
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| The hypocentre of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki |
The Atomic Bomb Museum was thankfully bilingual with exhibits with sufficient English text for visitors to make sense. Photos and artefacts made an impression on us though we did not make a complete round with full attention because of the time constraint. We did sit through a story-telling session of an essay by a school teacher writing of the first hand-experience of another school teacher who was right at the school which was reduced to a shell by the atomic bomb. The presentation was accompanied by drawings displayed on a small theatre. It was presented in Japanese. Thankfully, they gave us an English translation in print. The work won a UN Peace Award. The lady who read the essay was evocative, putting in sorrowful emotions where needed. Another lady translated into sign language though I was quite sure none in the audience needed it but to her credit she also evoked emotions in hands and body language.
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| Story-telling |
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| Zero hour for Nagasaki |
Rushing back to the hotel by tram, we checked out, left the bags and walked to the wharf ending up with a very nice Japanese lunch. But because we had to walk in the rain, our shoes and socks were soaked so we used the hotel hair dryer to dry out the shoes and changed our socks before heading out again. Always wear quick-drying shoes.
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| Lunch at the wharf |
Because of the foul weather we decided to take the short cab ride to the train station (cost less than 1,000 yen; the tram ride would have cost 240 yen for two but involve a lot more walking). It was our only cab ride the entire trip.
So, that’s it for Nagasaki. Probably more than enough for a DIY one-day stop. The hotel in Nagasaki was very nice, emulating old Portuguese buildings but as usual the room was tiny and the double bed even tinier. I think I tossed and turned the whole night.
Next stop Fukuoka.
We had booked three nights at the Hotel Excel Tokyu just two subway stops from Hakata Station. Checking in seemed to take a long time (from where I was standing) but when my wife brought the key cards, she was smiling secretively. She was offered a couldn’t resist upgrade to a suite for only like RM300 more. A night on a weekend in this hotel shoots up to RM7,000-8,000. It was one of the reasons we decided to proceed straight to Nagasaki because the quote rates for a Saturday night put us in state of shock.
The weather being cold and windy, we decided to make the suite the focus of our stay in Fukuoka. There was no public bath but the hot tub in the suite made up for it. I wished they provided foam bath. We even abandoned plans to make a day trip to Kumamoto and then drive to the mountains. Kumamoto reputedly has a lovely castle but it was damaged by a recent earthquake and some of the trains in the area are still out of service.
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| Really big room with really big bed in Fukuoka. There's also a large living room. |
We considered but discarded the idea of taking the 30 minute train ride to the reclining Buddha outside of Fukuoka.
{It is 1:02 pm, only about 25 minutes before we reach Hiroshima.}
Well, Fukuoka was basically just that. Some shopping was achieved. We saw a few shrines. Ate some good food, including Miyazaki beef at a famous restaurant (without reservation) 2 minutes walk from the hotel and even had another round of steaks at Wolfgang at the Grand Hyatt 10 minutes away.
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| The Teppanyaki Chef gave us a fire show. Lovely miyazaki beef steaks. The rump is better than sirloin |
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| Our lovely waitress Yu-ki at Wolfgang Grand Hyatt. That's a yellowfin tuna steak on the plate - not particularly memorable. |
And we managed to meet Mervin for lunch at the Chikae Fukuoka. Mervin was the young undergraduate from the School of Biological Sciences who came to my office at the Corporate and Sustainable Development Division in USM when I was the Coordinator of Healthy Campus. Omar Osman (the then Deputy VC) had sent him to me to facilitate The White Coffin project to rid the campus of polystyrene disposal containers. He’s now 32 years young and writing his PhD on education.
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| Mervin Low at Chikae Fukuoka ... |
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| ... lunch set only 1,600 yen with lots of good stuff |
After Fukuoka, we headed for Beppu. We weren’t sure to stay one or two nights but in the end decided to allocate one night for Miyajima where we are headed now. We arrived late in the afternoon and as usual walked to the hotel Nishitetsu, rested and went for a round of onsen. We love dthe outdoor pools (both the men and women onsen had outside pools), dipping in and out to alternate chill air and hot spring water. And there was nobody around except us. In our gender separate onsen.
Dinner was nearby at a Korean BBQ where our waitresses didn't look Japanese. Turns out they were Indonesian students at a university in Beppu. What do you all study? Economics, she said. And then we took a short walk to a public bath - we peeked in just to see what it’s like. Very cheap, only 100 yen to bath but renting a towel is about 300 yen. plus you have to pay for soap. So bring soap and towel.
Walking back my wife noted a sign and said “gambling”. I said, “this is a red light district”, the “hot luck” sign is something else altogether. There seems to be lots of shops offering soap baths around here too, obviously offering the public bath stiff competition. These cost several thousand yen depending on your options chosen.
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| Public onsen in Beppu |
We had a second round of onsen followed by quite nice breakfast at the hotel. And than that was it for Beppu. We discovered that the hotel has very early checkout at 10 am so we went to the train station to ask to move up out trip to an earlier slot. No trouble there. We could have gone sightseeing but I think we were sapped.
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| The Shinkansen aka Bullet Train at the Kokura Station |
{1:11 pm - yes I managed to write faster than the speeding bullet train.}
{Actually, I cheated. I finished the first draft faster than the speeding bullet train and then edited later on the plane.}
More photos in Googlealbum Kyushu 2017
Main Page Japan 5.0
posted in Kepong Baru
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