As I write we are waving goodbye to Matt’s Japanese ‘home’ island of Kyushu where we have spent the last 10 days since arriving here via ferry from South Korea. We are back on another ferry, this time heading to our second Japanese island – Shikoku where we are looking forward to exploring slightly less familiar sights.
It’s been quite the ten days! We’ve enjoyed an unusual combination of catching up with old friends (and staying in family homes!) and soaking in onsen (hot baths) as well as the more usual fun and interesting encounters with strangers (made even better by being able to communicate via Matt’s ability to speak some Japanese), amazing cycling and of course lots of delicious food.
It’s been a big deal for Matt to come back to Japan and in particular his ‘hometown’ of Ureshino, 16 years after he left. It’s fair to say that it’s brought back lots of memories – mainly happy of course, but also feelings of the passing of time (where did those 16 years go?) and an appreciation that that time in his (and our) lives is very much behind us. Hard for me to describe, so he has promised to write his own blog post in due course… watch this space!
Rewinding the clock, we arrived into Hakata Port (in Fukuoka) first thing in the morning last Monday after a slightly random but comfy sailing from Busan. In every way it’s the same as sailing from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. Except for there being an onsen on board, karaoke rooms and our full second cooking gas canister being confiscated (so glad I’d carried that across most of Korea…)
The feeling of being somewhere new hit us immediately as we cycled off the ferry. They drive on the left here for a start (Matt is still managing to get this wrong 10 days later), there are lots more ‘utility’ cyclists (people using bikes to get to work, take the kids to school etc), everyone is doing a weird (legal) combo of cycling on the pavement/road and it’s all very (very) calm and quiet. The Koreans are a rambuctious lot. The Japanese can be too after a few glasses of sake and when the karaoke machine gets warmed up but on a Monday morning it’s all peace and tranquility… Ahhh. I for one love a bit of peace and quiet so even negotiating cycling out of the big city (Fukuoka has a population of 1.6 million) felt pleasurable. Also, the humidity seemed to have dropped a bit (we had both been praying to all of the Buddhist/Shinto/Confucian gods/spirits that this would be the case at some point in Asia…)
Our first stop that day was Karatsu, a seaside city southwest of Fukuoka which was familiar to Matt and had a fab castle and impressive pottery (it’s famous for it in fact, like many places in Japan, and in particular in Saga prefecture).
Onwards from Karatsu we cycled up our first little climb to our bed for the night in Nanayama, home of Bobby and his Japanese/American family and his small business – Smoky Mountain. Amazingly Bobby arrived in Japan from Florida, US 17 years ago, in the same intake as Matt. The only difference is that Bobby has stayed, married Yuri, had two beautiful daughters, become a local celebrity (as a TV personality) and now runs his American barbecue restaurant with Yuri and the girls (who are both also the little entrepreneurs!)
Staying with Bobby (unfortunately we didn’t meet Yuri as she was away for a few days) was a lovely insight into ‘real’ life in Japan as a family, as well as what living in a bilingual household is like. We were made to feel very welcome, enjoying two delicious meals (one of Bobby’s TV shows was a cooking programme so he knows how to rustle up dinner!) and even helping the girls with their homework (I could do the maths, the kanji I had nothing to offer on, unfortunately!) Thank you Bobby for hosting us 🙂
Onwards from Nanayama and we were cutting over the mountains of Saga-ken to Ureshino – the small town Matt called home (it calls itself a city but I’m not so sure it is, really). Unfortunately the heavens decided to open about 30 minutes before we rolled in so our first hour was spent getting rained on outside the Junior High (the kids all waved at us mad foreigners from the windows all the same), going into Matt’s local 7-Eleven for a nostalgia onigiri (filled rice ball) and then to Matt’s old house with the intention of knocking on the door to say hi to whoever is living there now.
Except there was no door to knock. Oh dear – after a bit of head scratching and looking at the map in case we were in the wrong spot (we weren’t) Matt realised that his house doesn’t actually exist anymore, as well as the fire station which it was tucked behind. Just an empty space where it had been. To my earlier point, this really brought home the passing of time (in an unsurprising way, as of course things change in 16 years – including solid(ish) things that were there, not being there anymore). I say ‘ish’ because Matt’s house was mainly made of paper walls, paper sliding doors and tatami mat floors so it probably didn’t take much to knock it down.
We soon cheered up on arrival at the hotel we had booked for two nights (later extended to three). Ureshino (like many places in Japan) is famed for its onsen and enjoying a hot bath of an evening was one of Matt’s favourite activities when he lived here. We therefore thought it only right that we should stay somewhere with an onsen on site and Hotel Sakura was offering a great deal on booking.com which we snapped up.
All I can say is that if anyone is ever visiting Ureshino (unlikely I know, but possible now that it has a bullet train, or Shinkansen, station) you really must stay at Hotel Sakura. It was beautiful – our room had an amazing view over town, with the sleeping area boasting traditional tatami mat flooring. The yukata (casual kimono style cotton robes for relaxing in) were beautiful and the onsen itself was stunning. On level 10 with an indoors and open air section (and of course splitting apart men and women) it was the best place in the world I’ve ever taken all of my clothes off and sat in lovely hot mineral-rich water looking at the view! We haven’t felt this clean in a while and made sure we visited several more times during our stay. I am now an onsen addict and look forward to hopefully many more during our time in Japan.
The rest of the time in Ureshino was spent doing a bit of local cycling (which it turns out is absolutely stunning!) as well as a visit on the bikes for a dip in possibly the most magical wild swimming spot ever – the Ryo Tou Sen (Dragon’s Head) waterfall high up in the Onohara plains above Ureshino.
Matt also spent some time looking around town in detail, catching up with Japanese friends/acquaintances as well as popping into the Junior High properly to meet the English teachers – unannounced but very welcomed!
He also popped into the equivalent of the Town Hall and met the CIR for the town (Coordinator for International Relations). Back in 2006/7, the JET programme (Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme which Matt was on) didn’t have a CIR in Ureshino but for whatever reason it now does so as well finding out from Dominique (from Kentucky, US) a bit about what is happening in Ureshino in the ‘modern’ day, Matt arranged a meet up for the following night with Dom and the current local ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) Knox (from Tennessee, US).
We had a fun night with Dom and Knox who took us to a ‘Jazz’ bar and then excitingly to a ‘snack bar’ which is less about the snacks, and more about the ‘nomihodai’ (all-you-can-drink), and ‘karaoke’ (we all know what this is). Several hours later and several glasses of Umeshu (plum wine) for me, and several glasses of Umeshu, whiskey high balls, shoju (Japanese spirit) and sake for Matt (!) we had fully bonded with Dom and Knox and secured ourselves a decent hangover for the next day. It was really interesting to hear about how the JET programme and life in rural Japan has changed, but also what has stayed exactly the same. We also got an insight into the hopes and dreams of these guys and their generation (not the same as ours as Knox pointed out!)
We left Ureshino with heavy hearts (and heads) but pepped up on a cycle over to Kashima to meet with up an old teacher friend of Matt’s – Inoue-Sensei, and a visit to the Yutoku Inari Shrine.
We then doubled back to Yamauchi for a night with another old friend of Matt’s – Rumi, who in the last 16 years has met her now husband – Pat from Ohio, US and had two lovely children – John and Dylan. We spent a really enjoyable evening at Pat and Rumi’s enjoying an exceptional dinner and breakfast and again learning about what it’s like to live in Japan as a Japanese-American family. Thank you so much for hosting us Rumi and Pat 🙂
By this point we were both a little broken from all of the socialising, eating and drinking. So broken in fact that a day of cycling south to the Unzen peninsula ended up being cut short ahead of reaching our planned campsite up the mountain. Unfortunately a combination of said broken-ness/tiredness, my brakes failing and a very (very) steep downhill ended up with a nasty fall off the bike for me. It could have been worse as I managed to ditch in a pile of mud rather than literally down the mountain (and falling off with panniers on is by far better than without) but I seriously tonked my left quad on the end of my left handlebar (as well as bashing various other places on my left leg) and managed to graze most of my left arm from elbow to fingers.
I wasn’t about to cycle up a mountain at this point, so Matt busted out his best formal Japanese and managed to secure us a camping ‘spot’ squeezed between someone’s shed and the countryside road for the night. We were brought ice creams by the owner of the shed, cold ice packs and anti-mosquito coils by the neighbours and I was even encouraged to have a shower in the neighbours’ house (I needed it). It was an amazing display of the kindness of complete strangers once they had worked out what on earth was happening (in this part of the world it’s definitely not every day two foreigners on bikes knock on your door asking for somewhere to pitch their tent). Thank you to you all.
A bit sore and nervy the next day (and once Matt had changed over my brake pads – if only I had noted and told him they needed changing sooner) we were off, avoiding the planned mountain and instead taking the coastal route to Shimabara (home of another epic castle) and an hour-long ferry journey to Kumamoto. We enjoyed an indoors night here in an attempt to get some sleep (the heat the night before was intense in the farmyard, which coupled with my aches and pains resulted in little to no snoozing) and the most delicious ramen yet!
Since Kumamoto we have enjoyed taking it easy(ish) with three shorter days of cycling (shorter but with lots of climbing!) as we’ve explored the Aso-san volcanic crater and surrounding mountains.
Getting up high and finding two beautiful campsites has meant for better sleeping in the tent (finally) and the cycling has just been absolutely epic!
We arrived into Beppu on the other side of the peninsula yesterday lunchtime and enjoyed a visit to the steaming hot volcanic springs (or ‘hells’/Jingoku) as well as the bamboo craft museum. The day ended with a soak at the in-house onsen at a more bargain hotel than the Sakura (the onsen wasn’t quite as lovely but perfectly serviceable for soaking tired and still bruised limbs!) The ‘Viking buffet’ breakfast this morning (don’t ask) was more than serviceable so we are both busy digesting as we cruise over to Shikoku.
I said it’s been quite the ten days, right? Here’s to more – I hesitate to say it but is Japan our favourite place so far?!?
PS
I appreciate there aren’t nearly enough food pics in this post, for those of you who possibly only read this blog to look at pictures of food. So here’s a few:
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