The plane brought me to Kagoshima - an unpromising start as I was holed up in my hostel with storms and rain lashing outside. However sometimes a hostel day is good - I had not done much planning for Japan so I got my head down and hit the net. The first thing I saw was a weather window - the next day was going to to be glorious and the day after that. What better time to visit a local island called Yakushima - where the locals says it rains 35 days a month!
Yakushima is famous for it's amazing biodiversity and ancient cedar forests. Some trees are over 3000 years old! You can actually walk through the roots!
As you can see it was a hiker's paradise!
The next day I took advantage of the still shining sun and hired a moped to whizz round the island - natural hot springs, lots of photogenic macaques, deer and lovely beaches...
This was rural Japan at it's best - think of Japan as a country of wall to wall cities? Wrong - most of Japan is rural - great swathes of forest and mountains are virtually uninhabited! About 90% of people live in the cities so the rural areas are very quiet - just a few locals tending their rice paddies!
Away from the primeval forest Yakushima has a lovely coastline...
Not to mention amazing shrines, waterfalls, and mountain scenery..
Back on the mainland I took a ferry across the bay to Sakurajima Island - this huge volcano is one of the most active in the world but recently has become a bit sleepier as you can see - beware the sleeping giant I say!
The walk down from the observation post took me past some lovely shrines and some typical Japanese gardens.
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| Kumamoto Castle |
The weather turned bad the next day so I took the bus north via Kumamoto (where I stayed in my first capsule hotel!) and made my way to the Onsen town of Unzen - as you can see a permanent escape of steam comes from the ground here. Makes driving conditions a little tricky as you can see! Onsens are a huge part of Japanese culture and no trip to Japan is complete without a visit
Tattoos are not a huge part of Japanese society - they are often associated with Yakuza gangsters and most onsens don't allow them - weirdly when I went to the onsen in Unzen the first guy I saw was a Yakuza!I nodded politely!
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Unzen also had great hiking - a spiritual experience in Japan as you constantly pass by woodland temples and shrines. |
My next stop was Nagasaki - my last visit to Japan had included a visit to Hiroshima - I had originally dithered about going to Nagasaki as I thought it might be very similar to Hiroshima. I'm glad I decided to go - the experience was very different and more intense. In addition Nagasaki has a long tradition of trading with Europe. One of the foremost was a Scot - Thomas Blake Glover - who introduced shipbuilding and more importantly beer to Japan! There are also lots of churches here in addition to the temples and shrines - everything of course has been meticulously preserved as is the Japanese way - overall a very interesting place to visit
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| Glover Garden overlooking Nagasaki Harbour |
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They could learn something from this guy, Takashi Nagai - an atom bomb survivor - it's an amazing story too long to go into on here but this Wikipedia article tells the storyTakashi Nagai
Some of his amazing words are below..
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| Clockwise - 1. Nagasaki Memorial Statue 2.The Memorial Hall - the shelves at the end contain pieces of A4 with the 75,000 names of people who died instantly 3.Hypocentre - where the bomb actually landed |
Urakami Cathedral with rescued but damaged statues and the braids of origami cranes These cranes have become a symbol for Peace in Japan. A young girl called Sadako survived the bomb but 5 years later contracted leukaemia - she folded 1000 cranes to ease her pain. Her remarkable story is here..Sadako's Story |
| Peace Park Nagasaki |
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| The day the clocks stopped in Nagasaki... A life sized replica of the atomic bomb - unbelievably the Americans who dropped it called it Fatman - a jokey name for a weapon they knew was going to kill thousands of people... |
After the intenseness of Nagasaki I needed to chill out and relax - Lonely Planet recommended a little island called Hirado - this is how they describe it..
"The tragic irony of sweet, off-the-beaten-path Hirado is that it was once the spot where foreigners visited Japan before sakoku (isolationism) As trains, then planes, surpassed ships as the main entry to Japan, Hirado has been all but forgotten, especially since the town lies off a private, non-JR rail line"
Off the beaten path and forgotten? I knew I had to go there ! it wasn't exactly in the middle of nowhere - only a 100 km from Nagasaki. However in Japan tourists rarely look beyond the train - there is also a very efficient bus system which can get you to these "off the beaten path" places :-)
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| Hirado Castle |
Hirado was the first port to open up to the Dutch traders - and has an interesting mix of churches and temples like Nagasaki
It's a great place to walk around - it's like a microcosm of Japanese life - Shinto ceremonies in the streets, ancient shrines, Buddhist pagodas and cemeteries, bamboo forests..
Once you climb through the forests you reach an amazing plateau where you can see the sea on 3 sides - the azaleas were out as well to complete the idyllic picture!
I was also lucky enough to be in Hirado when they had an open gardens events. Not only could you get a look at the amazing gardens but also inside the immaculate old Samurai houses
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| Open house - to the right traditional family shrines within the houses - to the left taking lunch and a calligrapher at work |
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| Amazing private Japanese Garden |
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| My conversion to Japanese Culture is complete! |
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| Traditional Shamisen Player |
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| Typical entrance hall in a Japanese house |
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| Japanese supermarket - what would you choose?! |
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| The one food that is expensive in Japan is fruit - melons are seen as "Trophy Fruit" The melon is £45 or 60 US dollars!! |
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| The Japanese do love a vending machine - over 6 million of them!! |
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| Cooking and eating with Japanese technology - on the left Microwave with kanji script - I just kept pressing buttons until it worked! On the right a machine in a Ramen restaurant - you choose your food - pay for it and receive a slip of paper and take it to the counter. A minute later it gets delivered to your table! |
The Japanese are very social - like the Scots they like a drink! The beers are great, more difficult to warm to is Sake and Shochu ( a stronger distilled drink - it's more popular than Sake in Japan) but I did find something I really liked - Umeshu - Japanese Plum Wine
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| On the left delicious homemade Umeshu and on the right tasting Hirado Shochu - I just had the glass not the bottle! |
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| Off licence with one or two Shochu/Sake's on the shelf..
My wonderful weekend in Hirado brought an end to two wonderful weeks in Kyushu - this island is very undiscovered by British tourists but is a real gem and I could have easily spent another week here...
One other thing that would be amiss to mention is the warm welcome you get everywhere you go in Japan- it has got to be one of the most friendly places on earth. I had many kindnesses bestowed on me from the people I met in Japan which enriched my time there and made it very special !
As they say in Japan...
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