Monday, December 29, 2008
30.12.08

Nihon IV
OK this one is MUCH more picture intensive still nothing compared to jems though.

Ok in the previous post, which i think was too long, I was still in osaka taking the Shinkansen down to kyushu.
So we got on the Shinkansen, ate the bento we bought earlier and I started to enjoy the scenery passing by.

Just staring at the nice scenery was great. At least it was great until my eyelids started to close.
Cant remember much of the rest of the journey though but clearly remembering waking up to some baby crying.

Then my mom did something amazing, she just approached the baby, started playing with it and the baby just stopped wailing! I mean like WOW... Moms are equipped with amazing powers. Wonder if its only when they become a mom though... I think so... heh..

Cleaning squad all ready to rush on board!! Hut hut!

One of these boxes became my lunch.. yum..

We arrived at Kyushu and found our way to the hotel and then i heard that super fun tune when i was crossing the road !
The last time i heard it was 5 years ago!!It was so nostalgic! It was the traffic light tune. The same one you hear in swing girls !! Super nice movie btw.. For those who havent seen it, go see it! Anyway we settled down and prepared for a really long crazy 5 days. We bought the All kyushu JR-rail pass so we went to a few places, Hakata ,Nagasaki, Saga, Beppu, Oita, Hakata. - All in chronological order.



Hakata - This was where our main hotel was. We shuffled back and forth from here as it would have been really tiresome to keep travelling around with our baggage and everything. Some thoughts of this city.
Well I think i didnt particularly like it very much.
At night you can pretty much see loads of clubs and erm....indecent clubs coming alive.
There were quite a few homeless on the streets too. It made me really sad to see the city like this but it also made me thankful that Singapore isnt like that.
Admittedly I didnt feel completely safe in this area. Perhaps it was also due to the fact I was not in the major shopping district during this portion of the trip and i got to see more of the business districts and commercial areas.
The hakata Subway greets you the moment you get out of the tran station.

Super fun time ramen here ! Street ramen, the "old school way"
Hakata was quite cold and we were pretty frozen that night.
So when we saw this, it looks so inviting we just went in !

These little huts are dotted all over Hakata city. Just Pop in and order what you want.
Only problem for me was that I didnt exactly understand their japanese and he wasnt even trying very hard to help me understand !!



The style of ramen was quite native to hakata. Oishii!


My dad was happy with his ramen he didnt even wait for us !!One of the many Indecent clubs I mentioned about earlier, this one is one WHOLE building.




Nagasaki - Everyone would have heard of this place. Target site of the A-bomb. Actually nagasaki wasnt the first choice to bomb. It was the second.
The first choice, was another city, but on the day itself, the city was too cloudy.
So they headed to target number two. Nagasaki.
Yep went there to see the damage samuel can potentially cause when he sneezes... Devastating man.. Devastating.. Thank goodness samuel never falls ill.

Anyway I really liked this place alot.
A strange thing was that it was awfully warm for a city right next to the coast line.
I didnt even need a sweater there. Just a long sleeved shirt was enough.
Maybe it was the radiation from so many years ago.
Given a chance I would definitely choose to go back there again. It was so serene and claming you would never have thought that just half a century ago Fat-man flattened the city.
It quite scary when you come to think of it.

Visted a site dedicated to 26 Christian matyrs. A mix of 26 Japanese and foriegner christians were killed for their faith. To be more accurate, crucified for their faith. Again more to thank God for.
Monument for the 26 christians. 20 were japanese. 6 foreigners.

Also visited the at the Hypo-centre of the bomb site, the blast removed 500m of earth. I was literally walking 500m below what used to be buildings.
We headed to the A-bomb musem too. Saw lots of sad stuff there. Too bad i couldnt really take pictures as there were quite a few cameras watch the exhibits which they guard pretty closely.
Did sneak one though. Really thought this was nice..and sad Picture of a man and his ladder when the bomb hit.
The man and the ladder were gone, and they protected that portion of the wood, hence the "shadow left behind"

For lunch at nagasaki..We did take aways.
This was really strange that on a holiday you would go and eat take outs, but we figured we could get a taste of the Japanese kinda "working food". So we bought some food from this place called Hotto Motto and just sat nearby at some park/school seats to eat. My dad just went head over heels for the yakiniku don set we bought.
He fell in love with it so much he told us to buy it for the train ride home ... This is one of the few times he really loved japanese food!
To his credit, his set was really quite delicious!
My dads meal!!! Yakiniku rice!


On the hand, my mom had Champon.... erm... nagasaki styled ramen. According to my sister, the dish was created for poor china imigrants who came over to japan many years back. It used to be made with left over stuff they could find and lots of cabbage and was turned into a

Personally i didnt really like it. I felt it reminded me of salty hokkien prawn noodles. Only instead of it being "dry" it was soup.. Urm.. I didnt like it. I had oyaku don.
Also very nice.
Champon... -_-""

On the whole i quite liked what we ate, great take aways like that should exist in singapore!! Maybe we should set up one....hmmmm..... now thats a thought.. Another thing about nagasaki was that it had a tram service similar to hong kong. I think that these tram services are really great. They are always so cheap and efficient. Too bad they dont really fit into singapores transportation system.

Can see the NHK tower

NHK tower building with domo kun plastered outside!

Nagasaki city.

I LOVE maple trees.

Castella from nagasaki. yum.

Picture in the peace park, "Zhi Pai " once again.
I think it was karens influence from HK.

Part of the peace park

Another part of the peace park. You can even see a rainbow in the fountain!

Food for the train back!

More yummy food!




Saga - Ok this was one slightly boring city. There wasnt really much here. The places we were meant to head for were so far out that we gave up trying to reach there. In the end we checked out the old castle remains that were left behind. The place kept getting burned down in the past, so much so that they had to reconstruct quite a fair bit when they wanted to restore the place.
Super nice!!! Lanterns are lining the streets!




Huis Ten Bosch - Since there wasnt much to do at saga, my family headed out to this place called huis ten bosch.
Huis ten bosch is a "holland village" themed theme park.
It was one of the WORST idea ever to head to check it out..
Its really out of the way and the tickets cost 3200 for entrance tickets, BUT you have to pay for everything else inside.
If you purchased the "passport" with SOME rides free it would be 5000. Comparatively, if we went to universal studios or disney, it would cost roughly 5600 BUT the rides are all free.
As such we chose not to go into the theme park as it was late
Admittedly, the park area was quite pretty. Esp when the sun was setting.


I Love the scenery! Scenic

Beautiful sunset. Shitty camera.

"Holland" architecture.

The station




Beppu - ONSEN town. うれしい！！ The town itself was nothing much to speak of, very old and run down. However the onsens there are great! I think at least half the town is basically pumping the onsen waters into their bathhouses.
Its regarded as one of japans onsen towns. Of course its quite unlike hokkaidos outdoor onsens, but they have equally good onsens.
Anyhow, I stayed in one of the cheaper ryokans there, though it was still very expensive.
The food was superb though! There was SO MUCH to eat and I ended up a stuffed pig.
The sukiyaki was Super, the tempura was Super! the Sashimi was even better!!
I was so engrossed with the food i forgot to take pictures!
(Which may be a good thing as I get the feeling im becoming hated around here by MG and Grace)
The station from afar

Futons in the room

This here is the food before the MAIN stuff arrived. There was already so much !!
I had no idea where to start from!!

There were still some other stuff but i didnt take a pic though.
The Melon was yummy, the tempura fantastic and sukiyaki wa dai-suki!!!

About hour later after dinner, i headed to the onsen.
I dont have pictures of myself in the onsen though, thankfully...
Haha , but it was definitely a crazy experience.

Dad, mum and me in our yukatas.

When i went into the bath, it was half open air and was on the second floor, i saw the hot water tap running on full.
Knowing how blind am at times, I didnt see the advisory by the side saying that the water is hot since its directly piped and hence they had a cold onsen water tap included as well.

So i continue in my blind state and let the hot water continue to run.
I was butt naked, shivering from the cold winter weather and couldnt wait to get into the hot water.

So I went to take my Shower first. I turned the shower water to hot and turned on the tap happily expecting the water to warm me, but instead all i heard was a whole bunch of yelling from my dad next to me.
Before i could spin round to look at him, I got a huge blast of COLD water all over me and suddenly all I could hear was my own yelling.

The showers were serving us FREEZING COLD water.
If this was hot, cold must have be ice blocks! When the wind blew, I was just shivering!!
In the end, we grabbed our tiny wooden buckets and used some onsen water to combine and bathe together with the cold water.

So now we are all clean right? We TRY to go into the tub.
Remember, I was blind and didnt see the warning.
(For some reason it never occured to me when there was so much steam from the water it prolly meant that the water should have been REALLY hot)
So i went in and literally COOKED my legs.

Thats when I looked up and saw the sign.
I desperately turned the cold water and tried to get used to the boiling water at the same time.
My dad and myself were yelping like poor dogs !

It was about 15 mins later before we managed to get into the water completely submerged. Nonetheless, when I finally got in, i really enjoyed the warmth.
Ahh.....うれしい！

When our time for the private bath was over, we got out and i wanted to wash my feet cause the floor was a little sandy.
So I went to the shower taps, turned it on expecting cold water and guess what came out?!
HOT WATER !! HOT WATER CAME OUT OF THE STUPID TAP!!
AFTER MY SHOWER !!
Thats when i really burst out laughing and hollered for my dad.
He thought i was crazy until he went to see what happened. Then he ALSO started laughing.

Water in the shower tank was cold from the cold winter weather and hence the water that came out originally was cold, but after 30 mins of letting the "hot" water run, there was no more "hot" water and the water that came out was real hot water !
We really got quite a laugh out of this.

Anyway we went back to our rooms and found our futons all laid out and made so i plonked myself and fell into a super deep wonderful sleep.. Mmmmm...
Super cosy futons!! but VERY HOT.

I refused to get out of it. haha. too cosy

The next day, after breakfast, we left the ryokan to stay at another city.

Although we were staying at another city, we came back to beppu to visit the Jigokus.
The 8 Jigokus onsens are the "8 Hell Hot Springs" of Kyushu island.
Basically the water is so hot that people cannot actually use it to bathe in.
But the sights there were great. I even got to soak my feet some of the water there. I couldnt take very much of it though, I was so HOT.

Another Jap lady who plunged in right away, started to tell her husband its "HOT HOT HOT (in japanese of course)
A min later she took her feet out and it was RED. Lobster RED.
The ladys foot. Not very clear here, but it was REALLY red.
You can see her husband hugging the pillar his tolerance as not as great and didnt last as long as the lady.
You can even see in the foreground, all the steam rising.


My dad also could take the heat for a short while, but he was at a cooler side.


Anyhow I thought it was quite interesting to visit the 8 hells. I didnt visit themall though. Would take too long.

The water was a milky creamy white colour.

A couple travelling together who needed help with the place, so we just stopped by and helped them.

Crazy amount of steam. You can just see the gates when the steam clears.

Their english is really the best. I think they meant no entry. But they said Dont touch. So everyone went in anyway. Anyway there was just closed up stuff ...

Temptation is deadly. In this deceiving "cooler" pond of water, are tons of coins.
It is also shallow. You could put your hand in and actually fish out quite a fair bit of money.
I attempted to pick up a tiny coin at the side just to see if i could.
About 1 cm into the water i realized it was WAY TOO HOT. I didnt even touch the coin.
I bet they left the coins there to fool us! Secretly there was a guy laughing at me!

They grow Malaysia alligators here cause its always so hot the gators actually can survive!!

Sweet potato and eggs cooked by the steam from the hot springs all over!!

Weirdest sign I have ever seen. Its a parking lot for aliens.
Actually it was for the toilet the disabled. I really couldnt tell.





Oita A very nice city which ididnt get to spend much time in.

Twas basically my lodging for the night. I did walk around the city though and quite liked it.
Quite calm peaceful and enjoyable.
Not super busy and even at night i caught sight of break dancers and BMXers showing their stuff.

Didnt watch for long though, was late and we wanted to check the rest of the area out since the next day we would be going to Mt aso already.

I ate my first bite of macdonalds this trip in this city for supper and it was super nice !!
Ok i didnt completely love the pork burger as there was nothing much inside it, But everything else was delicious!! The ebi burger and the spicy chicken cutlet!! Woooh!!
Ebi burger!

Super karai Chicken cutlet. Even i thought it was pretty spicy. Coming from a chilli lover, i think that says quite a fair bit!
SuperCrepe shop near the hotel yum yum ... delicious crepe at the doorstep!



Mt Aso Mt Aso an active volcano. But we were actually allowed to go to the volcano, it prolly isnt THAT active. Anyhow the sights there were amazing. Just looking at Gods creation was うれしい！
There was a hole in the clouds letting some light through in the valley. Most of my shots are all blur cause i didnt open the window to take the shots. This is the only one i actually opened up the window to take the photo of.

The only problem with this trip was the journey TO and BACK from the volcano.
As we still had lots of baggage and stuff, we needed to drop by hakata city to throw our stuff first.
It made us go one big round, hence we probably took 9 hours of travelling for the whole trip in all.
The train was full of dead Japanese, Koreans and Singaporeans.
Those people over there are the koreans. All Dead asleep!

Despite the long hours of travelling, just looking at the view made me find it worthwhile.
Until i got back on the train that is.... After which i started getting super tired.
Taken on the train ride itself

Valley along nearby the volcano

One strange thing about the volcano was that it was pretty cold for a volcano! I think it was below 5 degrees without wind chill. And the wind was pretty strong !
The area around the volcano

I wasnt completely sure but this should be part of the crater. It was so huge, my camera could not catch everything!!

On the train I was given another amazing site.
Light was bursting from the clouds, lighting up the dark in japan.




Hakata Final city i was in before i left. Nothing much happened here though.
This time i got a different view of the city
Headed to see their disaster center and checked out some of their stuff that they have there.
Went through a fire simulation attempted to put out a fire, tried to escape from a burning building. Interesting experience but i think it would benefit kids more.
Wanted to experience the simulated earthquake, but it was sunday and they dont run it on that day.

So we headed to Tenjin, the orchard road of hakata and checked out some supermarkets and some shops they have there.Was raining on that day though .. put a slight damper on our spirits..
Not the most fantastic place to shop, but relatively still alright.
Only problem is the clothes are mostly winter wear.
One thing about their supermarkets, they try to force feed you lunch!!
Samples are EVERYWHERE!!

View of tenjin from a lift

Kirin beer!! unfortunately, this variation wasnt that nice to me.
I much prefered the normal one. If not, Asahi works for me too.

Milk from the cows near Mt Aso, the volcano! SUPER nice!!


Sashimi Plate I had before i left.

Rest are kinda misc pictures
I quite liked this picture and tried to move with him to take a sharp picture of the guy himself.
Didnt work too well though. Failed though as you can see.



Daniels guide to making an onigiri !
The first time i made it the hard way. Rice one side seaweed one side. Wrap.
Later on i realised the correct way as shown above.. lol..


Yummy food!

The top two dishes in the picture above were the worst Japanese dishes I had in Japan.
I love Japanes food and can have quite a high tolerance for lousy food, but they were really crap!
The Nabe(hotpot) and the Tepan(hotplate), the top two pictures, had ooshii meat in it.
Ooshii is basically cow. But the part of the cow meat was either the stomach or the intestines.
Im quite alright eating innards of like animals, liver etc etc.. BUT this was different.
It was really like rubber!! I was chewing it for a really long time before I could even swallow it!

Thankfully everything else in the picture was delicious!

Even More yummy food!!

In picture above: One of the best yaki-tori/niku I have ever had.
Also in picture above: The absolute worst takoyaki I have ever eaten.

Yummy sashimi and snow crabs. Crabs were from the super market.


The day after hakata i headed back to Singapore already.
I think on the whole the trip was a really good trip.
I improved my Japanese, at least im relatively more confident at ATTEMPTING to speak it to a Japanese.
Only problem is i usually dont understand the reply
My only qualm is that we really spent a lot of time in the train.
If i added all the train time, I think i could have hit almost a day worth of travelling the the train.
Thankfully the train rides were very smooth and allowed me to catch up on sleep or think about stuff.
Hopefully i will be able to save up enough cash this year to make another trip there with friends this time.
And hopefully i will be able to climb up mount fuji as well.
Thats a dream i have had for quite sometime.

Last look at Japan before I go back to reality.

さよなら！

To all who read the whole thing DOMO!!
To those who only looked at the pictures, hope you enjoyed it.

8:27 PM

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