Golden Week 1: Kokura and Kumamoto

Time to jump ahead to the present for a bit. A lot has happened in the last week, and I'd like to get it written down sooner rather than later. Back-dated posts will continue at the same snail's pace as ever, but working from two points will hopefully make keeping up with the present a bit easier.

After my last day in Kyoto on Friday, I took off Saturday morning for Golden Week in Kyushu. As mentioned in the previous entry, I left on my own, planning to meet with friends a couple days later in Nagasaki. I got on the shinkansen at Kyoto station, expecting a crowded train and finding exactly that. For the ten-minute ride to Osaka, I was standing in the aisle. There were people standing pretty much all the way to Okayama, but I managed to grab a seat from someone who got off in Osaka before new people got on. Apart from the crowdedness, the shinkansen was incredibly awesome. It's like a train in speed, distance, interior set-up, and unfortunately price, but you can actually see the scenery in the places you're passing through. Result is, I really want to go to Kobe one of these days, and I'm looking forward to the Bing trip to Hiroshima. Also, it goes fast and you can feel the speed. Not in a hard-to-stand sort of way... just a whooshing feeling. Awesomeness.

After two and a half hours on the shinkansen, I arrived in Kokura. First stop, of course, was the tourist information center. I picked up a couple maps and a guide to the attractions, noticed but did not photograph a sign pointing to ferries for Korea, and then headed out to find lunch. I wandered my way over to the arcade shopping streets, where I found an Italian-style cafe where I had tasty pasta for lunch and sat for a while looking at the maps. I found assorted "business hotels" -- basically hostels, but with separate rooms, more common, and maybe a little more expensive -- and got a rough idea of the places I wanted to go before heading out to Kumamoto the next day.

After lunch, I wandered around to the various hotels on the map. The first couple business hotels were upscale and expensive, being near the station, so I headed for one in the mess of small streets and farther away. Turns out the region I'd picked out was the adult region. I initially missed the street my hotel was on because I was hesitant to follow an arrow pointing to "porno city" with a rather prominent banana underneath it. When I looped back through the alleys to where the hotel I was looking for seemed to be, I saw a sign with prices by the hour, clearly for a love hotel. Though that concerned me a little, I eventually had the sense to turn around and found the more... traditional hotel whose name actually matched the one on the map and with single rooms available for entire nights at a time. The price was better, so I dropped my bag off and headed for the tourist areas.

First on the list was Kokura castle. I paid the fee to go in and found a fairly cool samurai-oriented museum inside, spread across the three floors between the entrance and the viewing platform at the top. First there was a nifty miniaturization of the town during the medieval period, complete with ninja climbing the central pillar. Next was a full-size model of a meeting of feudal lords, along with a set of swords provided for people to try the weights of. Thoroughly chained down. The last museum floor was less military, with delicate pictures made of cherry blossoms. Finally, from the top of the castle there was a view over the city -- helpful, since I hadn't fully decided where to go. From there, I decided that the garden wasn't worth stopping for, and planned to wander farther.

Once I'd descended, I passed briefly through the giant shopping mall that was on the city's list of attractions, but not mine. I did stop in a hyaku-en (one-dollar) store in the arcades, but otherwise passed on the shopping. Having run out of major attractions in Kokura, I figured I'd walk to Moji. For background, the city itself is called Kitakyushu, but it's made up of what were originally four or five separate cities that were merged by the government. Despite being administratively the same city, the centers are pretty far apart. I only knew this in a vague sort of way, and definitely didn't realize that Moji would be at least 10 km away. So basically, walking to Moji is the sort of thing that wouldn't have made it onto the itinerary if I'd done any research or been travelling with other people who did.

Not surprisingly, I didn't actually make it to Moji. I got hungry, it got dark, and I ended up taking a bus back to the hotel. I did spend a couple hours walking in the direction of Moji, though, and found some cool things on the way. First attraction was a little temple-looking place in the middle of an otherwise normal-looking street. The gate was open, so I wandered in, but it turned out to be someone's house. I think. It's hard to tell, sometimes. Nice break from the urban sprawl, though, either way. After that, I got to a less city-center type of shopping place. There, I picked up a kids' history manga with the hiragana written in for the kanji, had a bread-and-tea snack, and saw an incredibly cute elementary school girls' hip-hop dance competition. Continuing on, I saw the city shade into suburbs as I left Kokura ward. At the least populated point, I went through a tunnel and past a park, then watched as the car dealerships, restaurants, and finally department stores picked up again in Moji. After passing a few restaurants, I gave in and ate at a curry house before heading back to Kokura. On the way from the bus stop to the hotel, I passed about a dozen pachinko parlors and had the rare opportunity of confusing the bouncers as I, a single female foreigner, walked purposefully past the exclusive clubs in the neighborhood of my hotel.

I had been planning to go out after returning to the hotel, but the lure of the internet was too strong. I'd forgotten just how nice it is to have internet in the evenings, and stayed up late doing pretty much nothing at all.

The next day, after narrowly escaping the internet in time for checkout at 10, I got breakfast at a coffee house on the arcade street, passed by the dog store (?!), and headed into the station to catch a train to Kumamoto. I opted for the local train, which took 3.5 hours but gave me the chance to see such interesting sites as the Spaceworld theme park elsewhere in Kitakyushu and Hainu-dzuka, of no particular fame at all. In general, though, Kyushu is beautiful, full of mountains and rivers and suburbs that look totally different from American ones, and proved way too distracting for me to read as much of my CS textbook as I should have.

I got to Kumamoto in the mid-afternoon and, having learned from the pricey hotels of Kokura, headed straight for the sketchy district. Being more of a tourist town than Kitakyushu, the base price was about $10 more expensive. I wandered around for a while trying to find something cheaper, and in the process discovered that (a) capsule hotels really are for men only and (b) I don't understand love hotels at all. I didn't really plan to stay in the love hotel -- was basically just checking it out. But it is actually fully automated. And the people I saw leaving sort of cringed when the elevator door opened and someone was there. I probably confused the system horribly by pressing the button for a room, going up to look at it, and then leaving through the entrance elevator, but I didn't intend to stay and had no idea how to anyways. After a little longer, I gave up my search for less expensive hotels and went for the fanciest of the ones at the base price. This was my ritzy night. The restaurant looked very fancy, though I opted for buta-don (pork and rice) dinner at a chain nearby that I hadn't tried yet.

As I was wandering, I had an experience that Japan is famous for, but that I hadn't had yet living in Kyoto. I was stopped -- twice, actually -- by Japanese people wanting to practice English. The first time, it took me a minute to realize that the "Hi" I'd just heard could really only be addressed to me. The second time, the person who'd stopped me was apparently the owner of an Norwegian-themed bar. He said hello, asked where I was from, and invited me to come back later. I intended to originally, but by the time night came around I didn't really feel like going for beer with strangers. I sort of regret not going, but given that I only saw two other foriegners the whole time I was in Kumamoto, I suspect it would have been fairly empty.

I ended up taking a nap for most of the afternoon, but went back out in the evening to see Kumamoto castle. I'd been inside a castle the day before, and Kumamoto castle is famous for its lighting at night. Sure enough, the castle was lit in various colors. Most of the buildings were white, but some were also blue and red, creating a fairly impressive effect. On the way back, I stopped in at the international center, mostly out of curiosity, and read a bit of a Russian newspaper. Given my previous experiences with English in the city, I wasn't too shocked to find that the only people there were Japanese students of English.

After that, I spent some more time wandering the main area of town. It was full of people, apparently tourists, but all Japanese. Must admit, it was cool to be in a place where the Japanese go for their vacations. After walking as much as I cared to, and stopping briefly in the arcade across the street to play some of the awesome music games that just aren't around in the US, I went back to the hotel and enjoyed a bit more internet before going to sleep long before I had planned to.

The next morning, I woke up early to make sure I'd have time to explore one last spot before heading off to Nagasaki to meet up with the rest of the group. I took the tram across the river to Suizenji Park -- one of the "top three" gardens in Japan. I don't know who it is that does the ratings, but Suizenji is definitely an awesome garden. It's meant to be a miniaturization of the road from Edo to Kyoto during the medieval period (I think). It was a little hard to recognize the different spots, but the one that really stood out was mini Mt. Fuji. There was also a shrine that resembled Fushimi Inari, but I'm not certain if that was the intended effect. Apart from that, there was just the general feeling of smallness -- mostly in the trained trees and bushes -- to convey the miniaturization. While I was there, I bought a pack of postcards. Priority went to my Dad's birthday and various relatives for Mother's Day, but I've still got quite a few left for anyone who wants a postcard. If you've had the patience to read this far, you definitely deserve one. Send me an e-mail with your address and I'll get one in the mail. Can't guarantee it will have a thing I've actually seen, but I can guarantee a message and a Japanese postmark.

At any rate, after wandering around Suizenji a bit more (incidentally, if you're planning to spend time in Kumamoto, that's where the cheap hotels are) and being stopped one more time for an English conversation that quickly turned to Japanese when I introduced myself as an exchange student, I got on the tram back to the (wrong) station. When the tram turned away from the station I wanted to go to, I got off and walked the rest of the way. After buying my tickets, for lunch I had my first try of the ramen that Kyushu is famous for. Delicious. And from there, a three-hour train ride brings us to Nagasaki and the next entry.