This year, during Golden Week^ I went to Kyushu (the island west of my island) with Tyler, Shisei (aka Fake Japanese Girl 2), and Shisei's friend, Nell. We were all so busy with work right before Golden Week that the trip almost didn't happen, but in the last few days, we made a mad scramble to book hotels and everything worked out.*
Shisei and Nell live in Kyoto, which is on an entirely different island, so Tyler and I met them halfway in between in the ferry. Before the trip, I had actually never met Nell before, and Tyler had never met either Nell or Shisei, so we quickly introduced ourselves in the ferry's lounge, and then jumped on a bus to spend the next five days together. Fortunately, all four of us are pretty flexible and laid-back, so we ended up getting along really well and by the end of the trip, it seemed like we had all known each other much longer.
Our first stop was Yufuin, a little town in Oita famous for hot springs and chicken tempura. The hot springs had a really nice view of the mountains and felt quite nice after three or four hours on the ferry and bus. After hitting one of the hot springs, we went to a little restaurant that served famous pudding. The pudding was all right, but a bit disappointing because it was so expensive.
Tyler's holding 500 yen and I'm holding about 720, I think
(120 yen ~ $1):
In the evening, we checked out the shops on the main drag, grabbed dinner, and then tried to walk back to our hotel. The hotel was theoretically only a ten minute walk from the middle of town, but Yufuin is a bit out in the countryside so the roads are very narrow, windy, not particularly well-lit, and not so pedestrian friendly. We ended up trudging up one very dark road in the pouring rain for what must have been half an hour. After twenty minutes or so, it occurred to us that maybe we weren't walking in the right direction, so we brilliantly decided to check a map.
And luckily, it turned out that we had been walking the right direction after all, so we continued down the road and made it back to the hotel without incident.**
The next day, we got on another bus to go to Mt. Aso, a famous volcano in Kumamoto. The bad weather continued all that day, and the top of the mountain was really cold and foggy. Fortunately, it was also super windy too, so sometimes the wind would blow the fog away and you could suddenly see down into this huge, steamy caldera filled with bubbling turquoise water. It was pretty cool looking.
Tyler and I bravely attempting to avoid being blown into the temporarily invisible crater full of boiling water:
At the bottom of the mountain is a huge plain with a small lake in the middle. All of the touristy pamphlets showed people horseback riding around the lake, so we decided to head over and try it out. Unfortunately, by the time we made it to the lake, apparently the horses had gotten wise and gone inside to avoid the wind and cold, so instead of riding horseback, we did the next best thing and took pictures of each other jumping over a ditch...
...and preparing to do back flips (??).
Then we jumped some more...
...and went back to the ditch again.
This time, no one fell in the ditch.***
That night on the way back to the hotel, I had my first idiotic moment of the trip. For some reason which I can't recall at the moment, Nell and I decided to race down the road towards the hotel. I was running down the road when I heard something fall out of my bag and hit the ground. I ran on for several feet before it registered that I had dropped something, and then stopped and checked my bag. Fortunately, my wallet and camera were still there.
Unfortunately, the key to our hotel room was not. I felt like the biggest idiot in Japan.
The road was pretty dark by then so I highly doubted that we had a chance of finding the key again, but miraculously, after five minutes or so, Tyler found it in the grass by the side of the road. I still felt like an idiot.
Idiotic moment number two happened the next day on the train to Fukuoka. We got off the first train to transfer and walked halfway around the station before I realized that something was missing, that "something" being a certain gray duffel bag with all of my clothes and toiletries.
I quickly ran over the station office to ask if they could look for my bag, and the people in the office called and asked someone to search the train, but couldn't find anything. There wasn't really anything I could do so I left my contact information at the station office and got on the next train toward Fukuoka.
On the bright side, there was nothing valuable in the gray bag and losing it meant that I had less baggage to carry around, but even so, it was a bit annoying to have no clothes. For the last three days of the trip, I wore the same t-shirt, jeans and socks, bought a toothbrush at a convenience store, and mooched off of Tyler and Shisei's toothpaste.
However, I couldn't quite deal with the idea of wearing the same underwear for three days straight, so Shisei, Nell and I made a quick side trip to a mall. I don't know why, but the underwear trip was strangely awkward at first. Maybe it was because up until then, I had never shopped for underwear with anyone other than my mother. But thinking back on it now, I realize that it was a little ridiculous of me to be embarrassed, considering the fact that we had all just gone to a public bath together and seen much more than each other's underwear.
Anyway, two days later, I asked about my bag at the station in Fukuoka and the (very grumpy) people at the lost-and-found finally helped track it down and shipped it back to my apartment, so everything ended well. My wardrobe is still intact with a net gain of two pairs of underwear (!).
Fukuoka is famous for ramen, so we stopped at a shop there for lunch. The ramen was good but the most interesting part was the odd, antisocial layout of the shop. The counter was partitioned into little private booths so that you couldn't even see the person sitting right next to you. Also, you couldn't see the staff behind the counter either, because there was a curtain in front of you with a little gap at the bottom where they passed you your ramen. The menu explained that the little booths were designed to give you privacy so that you could properly concentrate on your ramen....I guess they're really serious about their food there. Still, the atmosphere seemed a little weird to me. I felt like a criminal huddled in my little secret booth, and half expected one of the ramen chefs to slip me some kind of contraband through the slit under the curtain.
Here's Tyler caught in the midst of some shady ramen dealings.
I was very tempted to peek over the partition like this at the unsuspecting Japanese person on my left, but finally figured that I had done enough stupid things on this trip and restrained myself. It would have been kind of funny though....
^ Golden Week = a random week around the beginning of May where (almost) everyone in Japan gets time off and goes on vacation
* Well, almost everything...on our last night in Kyushu, there was a big festival in Fukuoka so there was not a single vacant room in the whole city. We ended up going to karaoke from midnight to 6 AM that night and slept for maybe an hour in the karaoke box. It wasn't so bad though, because I slept the next day on the bus and ferry back to Ehime. :)
** Well, almost without incident...all except for the part when the sidewalk dropped off suddenly and Tyler fell in a small ditch.
*** Really. No one fell this time.
