OK, I’m going to do the same thing I did yesterday because I’m meeting my buddy for dinner and I’m not sure how late I’ll be out. Hopefully not too late, since I’m not sleeping very well during this trip.

I got up this morning and I have two things I needed to do. See the rolfer and visit my friend Moriwaki. The rolfer told me I should probably use heat to help my problem and it’s dropped about 20 degrees since the trip started, so that’s kind of rough. I wish I was at an onsen where I could take a nice soak but I’m in Osaka. I’m OK with pushing through the pain to see something really interesting but it’s cold (in the 40’s in the morning!) and rainy so that usually means it’s a day for shopping. And while I’m OK with shopping if I’m with my sister, I really don’t have anything in particular I’m still looking for. Maybe some more USB-C cables, but those are available on Amazon at home. I did make a quick trip through Tokyu Hands and the Minecraft popup and the Nintendo stores, but meh. I’m back in the hotel room. I took a nap and watched some YouTube. The important thing is to get on the train to go see Moriwaki.

For breakfast I went back to the Drip-X Cafe in the Hotel Vischio. I saw the bicyclist from the other day and I joined them and got so busy talking that I forgot to take a picture of my hot dog until they left.

It was one of the good Japanese sausages with cheese and I really enjoyed it. The coffee is growing on me too. It was CHILLY. I went back to the hotel to grab a pair of gym shorts in case the rolfer wanted me to wear them. In the US they usually just have me stand in my underpants to assess my body misalignment but I wasn’t sure how it worked in Japan.

I started off towards the rolfer and by the time I got to the taxi stand my leg hurt quite a bit. I didn’t think I’d make it in time if I walked with this pain in my leg so I took a taxi. Drivers here are either chatty or silent and I got a silent one today. It took no time at all to get to the apartment tower where the office was and he told me to go to the next tower over. After trying to figure out how to get into the tower, wandering around, it turns out he dropped me off right in front of the building I needed to be in. Sheesh.

The rolfer was great. She’s been doing massage therapy for at least a dozen years (I can’t remember exactly what she said) so I left it in her hands and I felt great afterwards. HOWEVER, I knew that as screwed up as I got it was going to take a bit to fix everything. Sure enough, walking back to the hotel it started to hurt again. Not like in the mornings, but why push it? That’s why I’m back in the hotel.

Oh, on the way home I went underground because it’s CHILLY as I mentioned earlier. I was right near the Daisan building which is full of businessmen and there’s all sorts of restaurants in the basement. I went to an Okinawan restaurant and tried to order goya champuru but they just ran out! I had taco rice instead, which was pretty good. Oh, if you ever do go down there keep in mind a lot of the restaurants allow smoking.

Sitting in the restaurant my leg started to hurt. I could’ve forced myself to keep shopping or wandering around Umeda, but I wasn’t excited enough to push myself. Anyway, the important thing is to meet Moriwaki tonight. I quite enjoy sitting and watching YouTube or Netflix and there’s no other way to eat all the things I’ve been eating besides coming to Japan so I’m OK with all this. It’s not ideal, but it’s still fun.

Update:

I met up with my old co-worker Moriwaki for dinner. As always it was fun to talk and he’s quite unique. He’s about three years older than me and about to fully retire and move to Beppu. But even now, in his semi-retirement at 62, he bought a second house in Wakayama and goes fishing all the time. Basically, it’s what I aspire to. He went to high school and college in North Carolina and has a unique perspective.

We went to an okonomiyaki place because that’s what I always tell him I want to eat. I don’t know of any decent places in Portland.

Moriwaki also said eat it only with the spatula – that’s the Osaka way. His was much smaller than my deluxe, so we also got yakisoba. This is after we’ve eaten some of it.

He drove us to a Starbucks for dessert.

Oh, I forgot to mention, he used to have a two seat Mercedes Benz convertible. I figured as a fisherman he’d have a new car, something more beat up. Well, he has a new car, a two-seat Jaguar with an incredibly aggressive cam that pops when he hits the accelerator. It’s always good to see the guy.

UPDATED not that anyone would notice.

I might update this later, but it’s mid-afternoon and I’m chilling in the hotel room. It’s cold and rainy and I’ve done the main thing I wanted to do today: laundry. I also went to Toki, a restaurant I go to at least once a year. But first, I went around the corner to the fancy Hotel Vischio because my sister said they had a coffee shop, and they did! The coffee was strong and the breakfast set was tasty.

Lots of SE Asians there, or at least they sounded like SE Asians to me. After that, I went back to the hotel and grabbed my laundry bag and headed to the Laundry Robot Lab.

Remember how I said I bought a massage gun and it worked wonders last night? Well, I’m still a huge mess and it took quite some time to walk the 12 minutes to the laundry. It’s worse today, I think, but I just know its kind of bad. But I made it.

The laundromat was clean and there were tables with chairs where you could wait. I think this is a nicer neighborhood. Lots of people were coming in to use the dryer since it was a cold day and I guess rain was in the forecast. Carrot Weather failed me and it’s rainier than they said. You know what makes it a Laundry Robot Lab? Just that there’s a machine where you can pay with credit cards, Suica cards, etc. (It’s the one at the end of the row of washers.) I watched one guy try card after card without much luck. It took him about five minutes to get it right. I didn’t help because he was much younger than me and should know about these things much more than I do. 

The taller washers were washer/dryer combos and I used the one with the “Attack” detergent. I finally asked a woman what that meant and she just said it was a brand of laundry detergent, probably fancier than the industrial one in the rest of the washers. No one else came in to use the washers but all the dryers were in use. You can see the big dryer to the right of the picture. There were six more stacked dryers. You could use coins but no one did. You just use that blue machine and tell it which washer, washer/dryer, or dryer you want to use and it does the rest.

I made it back to the hotel about noon and they said they’d already cleaned my room. I sat around for about an hour. Then I went looking for food. The lines were long again, but nothing like yesterday. The weather was much nicer earlier in the day yesterday. Somehow I decided it was time to get Famichicki and it was just a breaded cutlet. Tasted like real chicken and was better than one you’d get from the freezer section in the US but it was still just a breaded piece of chicken.

I also got some karaage and all of it had to be microwaved because the heat lamps didn’t do much. One salt flavored and two soy sauce flavored.

I also had a milk tea that was ridiculously sweet.

I handled this all with one hand while I took pictures with the other. I was also holding an umbrella. And everything was kind of slippery. How? Well, the Famichicki comes in a bag that you tear in the middle so you can hold just the bottom part without getting your hands greasy.

And then it was time to get into the long line at Toki to get the same dessert I get every year. The past few times I’ve gone Toki hasn’t been that busy but this year there’s lines. Good for them. And I got matcha shiratama as I do most years.

And since I got two big checklist items taken care of and it’s cold and rainy plus since my back hurts, I decided it was time to head back to my tiny hotel room to chill at least until dinner. And dinner might be Wendy’s because for it’s just around the block and for some reason it sounds good. But I might also take another run at Baqet as well. We’ll see.

Oh, and the best news, I finally got ahold of a rolfer and I’m seeing them tomorrow morning! Wish me luck!

UPDATE (just dinner, really).

I think two people read this blog and they should’ve been asleep by the time I posted the first time, so I’m not sure why I mention the update.

Ah indecision. I thought I should go to the steamed veggie place because I ate like crap at lunchtime. Fried chicken and then wagashi is not a complete diet. And whatever horrors I’m putting in my body at home seems to have way more fiber than what I’m eating in Japan, if you catch my drift. But I noticed there was no line at Grill Ron. The last two days at lunch there’s a huge line, and today I asked one of the people working there and they said it’s was on a YouTube video. I kept walking to the steamed veggie place and I ended up back at Grill Ron. At this point all the chairs were taken so I was supposed to stand in line across the way.

They give you a menu while you’re waiting and take your order before you go in. There’s only three four-tops (Japanese four tops which are pretty small), three two-tops, and three counter seats although I can’t imagine three people could sit at the counter. The menu was pretty simple, several different sets of “mixed fry” and some other things I didn’t really look at (like omurice). I got the “C” set with 100% beef hamburger. Came with some miso soup as well. The order came pretty soon after I sat down inside.

It was pretty good. Everything was just a little better than expected. The shrimp was prefectly crispy, the burger was good, the cream crab croquette was tasty. Not spectacular, just exactly what you’d want. I guess that and the small seating area are what causes the line. I’d say try it if you can, and honestly if everyone just eats and goes the line moves pretty quickly.

After that I just headed back to the hotel. I got some 7Eleven fizzy water and some more chocolate. Here’s a picture of that.

I like those chocolates because you can eat a few at a time. They’re really tasty too. This year I’ve been getting the almond with the puffed rice in the chocolate, which I’ve never seen before. I often get them with just macadamia nuts. They’re very tasty. The fizzy water is a cheaper version of WIlkinson which they don’t seem to sell near this hotel. I think Wilkinson is better, but they’re both better than LaCroix.

And that’s it for the day. Here’s hoping that the massage person can help me with my hip pain!

Well, there really wasn’t much else to do in Onomichi but it was a beautiful morning and I tried walking around the hotel a bit but it takes a bit for my back to loosen up. And there really wasn’t much to eat in the area besides a coffee shop next door. But I had the idea that I wanted to try finding a rolfer in Osaka so I just got going. Not the best plan. Fortunately, sitting on the train isn’t too bad for me.

Onomichi station is actually not that small and there’s even ticket area. They told me there were only three seats available on the shinkansen and all three were middle seats. I was dreading it but when I got to the train there was no one else in my row. A woman came and sat in the aisle seat but no one ended up in the window seat. That was fine. I passed out most of the way. I haven’t been sleeping through the night. I should probably quit drinking so much Pocari Sweat in the evening.

I made it to Osaka and man was it crowded. Both Shin-Osaka station and Osaka station are a special kind of hell on the weekends. I dropped off my bag at the hotel and sat down for a minute and saw lots of other people doing the same thing. It’s a fairly industrial looking lobby with some interesting touches. And it felt good to sit.

Then I decided to go look for lunch at 11am before the crowds hit. I must’ve missed my chance by a lot because there were lines at the most popular places that looked like they’d take hours to clear out. And most places that were open had the kind of seating that wouldn’t let me stretch my bad leg so they were out. I walked around for almost an hour before I started feeling like I was going to throw up. A breakfast of Advil and chocolate will do that to you.

Fortunately I saw some older ladies go into a brewpub and I thought I could try the pizza. What’s the harm in getting a ham pizza? Well, even though they looked to have a wood fired pizza oven, it was underdone. And there was a fishy cream sauce and a soft-boiled egg on the pizza. It wasn’t bad, just a bit weird. At least it helped my stomach a bit.

The brewpub seemed to be a big date place. Someone even had a birthday and they turned down the lights and played special music. The poor birthday girl was embarrassed and what the heck are you supposed to do with a sparkler in your dessert?

Check-in time wasn’t until 3, but I got back at 2 and sat in the lobby for a bit. I got to my room and it might even be smaller than the one I had yesterday, but I like it better. Industrial concrete walls don’t bother me much and I wasn’t expecting as much from this place.

My coin flip app told me to actually go to a restaurant when I considered just grabbing something from the combini. So I made it up to the food floor of the Yodobashi camera. I came in from the new, fancy side and saw that the Kobe beef restaurant was booked solid for the night. I was more thinking about two places I always seem to go to, and omurice restaurant and Baquet which has a variety of unlimited bread rolls that’s constantly being baked. Baquet was out of style for a while but today it seemed to be the go-to for families with small kids. Omurice it was. I got the seasonal set with a bolognese sauce which I’d never heard of. It was a little weird.

And it was butter rice inside which could’ve used a bit more flavor.

It came with a salad, a paper cup of miso soup, a drink (I had lemon squash!), and mini-marron dessert.

On the way out I looked at some fancy kitchen knives and then foam rollers. I figured it would be a pain to carry around but my back hurt. I also looked at a tiny massage gun and actually tried it out. It got the pain out immediately! I knew it was probably too good to be true (and it was) but I bought one. Dr. Air, the company that had a back massager I wanted a few years ago but no one would send it to the states!

Anyway, I killed some time talking to some people from the East Bay who bicycled around Yakushima. They bought some fancy knives and I showed them how to take their receipts and try to win some prizes. All we won were the booby-prize but it was umaibo and I love those things (I won two).

And that’s it for the day. I think tomorrow might be an exciting laundry day and I hope this massage gun lets me limp around better!

My plans for today kind of went sideways. There’s my hip pain. Then it’s raining. And I’m meeting my cousin for lunch in the middle of nowhere. It all worked out and my final plan was just to make it to the seemingly luxurious hotel and just hole up for the evening. The hotel is fine but is not nearly as nice as the photos and it’s really in the middle of nowhere. I decided to stay here when I thought I’d be more mobile and also assuming the weather would be nicer.

Anyway, calling it a travel day. I started off with a later breakfast than usual after trying to loosen up the hip. I was warned there’d be a lot of students and the restaurant would be crowded. I was lucky in the big bath last night so I wondered about the hotel restaurant. I got there around 8 and there were two other people there. I think they left and were replaced by two more people. It was quite tasty but it took a while to eat because I wanted to wait until after I ate to take any Advil.

I was pretty full after all of that. To get to the meeting place with my cousin I didn’t have to get to the station until 11AM. Checkout is at 10AM. I figured it would just be easier to sit around at the shinkansen station than try to find a nice spot at a coffee shop and I was there an hour early. I watched sat on the platform by myself, watching the occasional shinkansen whiz by. (I’d add the video but I can’t figure out how to do that right now.)

Then it was a short 30 minute ride from Shimonoseki to Tokuyama, and a short local train to Kudamatsu. They took me to the same hotel that we went to last year and they recently stopped having a buffet. I got the “middle” offering of fried flounder and there was way more food than I expected. And my cousin also got me some flounder sashimi.

All three of us got the same thing. On the left is some pork and rice, then “hirame sembei”, deep fried flounder bone and skin, homemade tartar sauce, and then the fried flounder with some salad. It was better than I expected and seasoned very well.

We also got the special dessert. They said they only had one left, but if the table wanted it they could probably do one for each of us. There’s a pudding base, ice cream, and a small slice of pie. I think those chips are deep fried pear but they were very sweet.

So there were my two meals for the day, if I’m to go by the rest of the trip.

I had no reserved seat for the next part of the trip so I took the slower train that stopped at every station. It got me from Tokuyama to Fukuyama 30 minutes later than the faster train, but the stops do get annoying. I was able to take up two seats and there were plenty left. Then at Fukuyama station I took a local train that backtracked to Onomichi. Onomichi station was much larger than I expected but there was no taxi stand! I guess there’s no need, but eventually a taxi showed up. I got a ride to the hotel because it was raining and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to walk all the way to the hotel.

The hotel isn’t as nice as the booking.com pictures. It’s tiny. There are four rooms on my floor. And the room itself is tiny. No bath, just a shower and the sink is part of the room. Here’s my desk.

And here’s the beds.

That think on the shelf above the beds is the “fridge”. It looks like one of those USB fridges that get advertised to you and never works very well, but it seems OK. You can see the sink on the right. But here’s a view from the beds.

And the bathroom.

The only other time I saw a bathroom this small was at a Dormy Inn where there was a large bath available.

It’s also quite drafty. But it’s fairly clean and good enough for a night.

As you’d expect, I didn’t get much done today, but then again, I got a lot done. My leg still hurt. A lot. And the massage therapist I see in Portland suggested I find someone who does deep tissue massage or a chiropractor. Do you know how few rolfers I found in Japan? I called 10 within 200 miles and I got no answers at all.

But first I ate some breakfast. I realized I’ve been at a Comfort Hotel before in Kochi. They’re really not my favorite, but there was a lot for breakfast. I ate more than yesterday because I think things are starting to loosen up a bit. I still didn’t eat a lot. Oh, and if you’re a fan of cereal, Comfort Hotel has it. I did not find white rice, however.

I rode a bunch of short hops to Shimonoseki. One stop to the Shinkanen, two stops on the Shinkansen to Kokura, and then a couple stops on the local to Shimonoseki. I crammed myself onto the crowded Shinkansen because I was pretty sure the guy next to me was getting off way after I was.

The area around the train station looks big but the restaurants aren’t open very late. There’s a Daimaru department store and some other stores there. The weird part is how many stairs you need to use to get across the streets. I dropped off my suitcase at the Via Hotel (which looked up even though there are stairs to get in) and headed out.

I went to make train reservations for my weird trip tomorrow which includes a stop to see my cousin and then backtracking and heading to another small town. But the ticket office is closed from 11am to 3pm and so I went to the tourist information bureau. They were staffed by someone who sounded possibly Korean. She basically pointed out some areas and a tower to see over the town. Instead of heading to the tower, I asked google about chiropractors and saw two not very far away.

The first one was closed. The second one looked an awful lot like someone’s house and the name made me think it was a chiropractic association and not a practitioner. I knocked and was let into a room that looked like a warehouse for kids toys (I guess like a house with small children) with an older looking exam room. The chiropractor told me he wasn’t really open but he’d see me. He told me he took himself off of Google and sure enough, I can’t find it any longer.

He was GREAT. Took two hours realigning me and while things still hurt, they were bearable. And I got some advice about tensing my lower abs before exerting myself. I guess he had a clinic in Tokyo and his late father had a clinic here and now he’s back home to look after his mother and eventually open up the clinic. He still has patients in Tokyo and he goes back and forth. Also, this is mostly guesses from what he told me, the doctors are so powerful in Japan that chiropractic is about to go away here and a lot of the people who put it on signs haven’t even studied it. Because of the medical lobby, it’s medicine or nothing here. He agreed with my assessment that acupuncture is for immediate but not long-term relief. Also, he’d taken night classes in osteopathic manipulation from a real DO. He said chiropractic manipulation is good while you’re younger, but osteopathic manipulation is better when you’re older.

Anyway, two hours of body manipulation and the guy was getting sweaty. I do feel better and while things still hurt, they feel like they’re getting better.

I found a taxi to take me to the tower and called today a success.

I saw a lot of south Asians on the way to the chiropractic clinic, and when I went to dinner it seemed like there were a lot of SE Asians working there. I had a hard time understanding some of them. I ordered one of the local specialties (I thought I ordered two things and a salad) and after that I ordered the 8 piece yakiniku set. I felt bad because I wasn’t drinking, so I got out of there after that.

I still was a little hungry so I bought a rice ball and too much dessert at 7Eleven. I’m no TabiEats.

After that it was time to take a bath in the big basement bath. I guess there’s a middle school trip staying here and luckily they weren’t down there. Just a weird dude who didn’t quite seem Japanese and a grandfather with his screaming preschool-aged grandson.

And that’s it for today. Lots of traveling tomorrow and lots more ibuprofen, I’m sure.

I just spent 6 hours watching videos on how to identify back pain by a PT and so far I think I have problems with my piriformis but I also have ruled out the piriformis. At least I ruled out just about everything else as well. At this point I think it’s muscular, and I sure wish I was at home so I could get a decent massage. The ones here I know about are nice but they’re more “relaxation massage” and I need deep tissue. It’s a very unlocalized (i.e. not sharp) pain in the side of my hip and it hurts so bad that I’ve considered cutting my trip short. Walking makes it worse, going up stairs makes it worse, and I think the only thing that really helps is lying down.

I haven’t been getting great sleep either. I thought I’d sleep better since it was colder but I remember looking at the clock at 4AM and then next thinking it was time to get up and it was only 4:10AM. I passed out on the train this morning and once in the afternoon and I’ve been in the hotel since checkin time at 3pm. I also had dreams during my 10 minute nap at 5pm, which isn’t right. And I even had a dream about my college girlfriend last night. Weird.

But enough complaining. Here’s MORE COMPLAINING.

I got up to get my “free” Toyoko Inn breakfast and since it takes a while for the hip/leg thing to loosen up, I didn’t have an appetite. They even had curry rice! The miso soup had clams in it and there were other things on the menu that I didn’t grab. This is all I had from the buffet.

After that I took three ibuprofen and bought some back plasters for my side. That is what made me so sleepy that I was unable to stay awake on the train. I got to Saga without much trouble and I suppose there really isn’t that much here. But the little that is here was pretty interesting. At breakfast I met an elderly Australian couple who were on a two month trip visiting their kids and they mentioned the castle in Saga was only one story. Not all Japanese castles were big towers on hills. I decided to go and had to take a lot of breaks even with the aid of the Advil and back plasters. Here’s a picture of the main gate. The rest was a huge sprawling one-level house.

As with most castle reproductions I’ve been to in Japan, it was a museum of the local history. Saga is a big city with an important history building some of the earliest forges to produce cannons and ships and trains. Sadly Saga doesn’t have a lot of interesting attractions so, like I said, it’s always at the bottom of the list for the most beautiful prefectures and usually in last place unless it gets beat out by Ishikawa prefecture. I don’t think it deserves to be down towards the bottom.

I then walked to a neighborhood with several old houses, walking through two very large shrines that were right next to one another. Luckily there were plenty of places to sit on the way. When I got to the “old bank” I noticed there was a cafe inside and decided to have some lunch. I probably overdid it.

Here’s another picture of the salad on its own. It wasn’t tiny.

I even had dessert. (That’s ginger ale in case you were thinking it was booze.)

Then I decided to go to the free observation deck of the prefectural offices and it was really nice.

After that I took the bus back to the hotel and checked in at 3pm to watch videos on how to fix your back pain. Six hours later I knew nothing other than it’s probably not something awful. It still feels like it though.

I did leave at 7-ish to get some dinner. I was still pretty full from lunch and was thinking rice balls and sandwiches from the convenience store but I went to a bakery. I didn’t bother taking a good picture.

The bread would’ve been better fresh but it wasn’t bad. Curry pan, cheese pan, something with beef, and that one at the bottom is an oddly shaped melon pan.

Oh and I’m staying at the Comfort Hotel. It’s quite a bit more expensive than the Toyoko Inn but most of the improvements are cosmetic. I’ve decided I’m really not a fan. It’s clean, though, and I hope I get some better sleep tonight. (I just realized the pillow is only a couple of inches thick.)

I got up this morning and my back (really my right hip) still hurt. I tried some of the psoas stretches I saw online that seemed to help yesterday morning but they did nothing today. After breakfast I took 2 ibuprofen and either it didn’t do much or it took a while to kick in. My sister later reminded me that my father had back problems when we visited Japan a long time ago as well. Stupid genes.

I’m getting ahead of myself. I had the same breakfast as I did yesterday and it was still good. Took me a while to eat it because my hip hurt.

After breakfast I packed up and made my way back to the acupuncturist and when I arrived my hip hurt so bad I couldn’t sit and wait. I had to walk around outside. Luckily it was a much nicer day. And while he didn’t fix everything, it was better afterwards.

I got my train ticket to Sasebo. Usually there’s two ways there, one using the shinkansen and one taking the coastal route that takes longer. Unfortunately due to track repairs, the coastal route wasn’t running today. That’s OK, I wanted to take the new Nagasaki shinkansen anyway. I had some time to kill so I looked for a place to sit down. Short chairs make things worse for me, and the waiting area had short chairs. I ended up at the outdoor seating at Mickey D’s. The new station is scheduled to open on 11/10 (yeah, Friday) so here’s the view.

At least it kept the crowds down and I could get an outdoor seat. The box is some weird triangular lava cake-sorta thing. It wasn’t bad but lava cakes are pretty much chocolate overload for me.

Oh, here’s the building that would’ve been nice if it was open.

I took the toy shinkansen to the end of the route, a whole 30 minutes away. There’s some feuding with Saga prefecture who vies for the bottom spot as the ugliest prefecture. I suppose the real list is “the most beautiful prefecture” but I don’t know what else you’d call the bottom of that list.

The seats were oddly made of wood as well.

There you have to get on a relay train to Hakata where you can link up with all the other shinkansen lines in the country.

I took the train to Sasebo instead. It felt quite odd, driving slowly and steadily through the countryside. It felt like it was going slower than the one car trains I’d been on earlier in the week and it was quieter and, uh, steadier, and the seats were quite nice.

When we got close to Sasebo we had one of those weird stops where the train pulled into the station and then backed out again, going backwards for the last little bit to Sasebo.

I asked the tourist bureau what I should see. They told me to go visit the 99 islands. I guess there really are 208 islands but 99 was symbolic for “too many islands to count”. They said take the bus to the end, take the boat trip around the islands, take a taxi up to the viewpoint, and then take the bus back. The bus is ¥140 and the taxi would be closer to ¥4000.

I got off the bus and found out I was on the last boat of the day!

Quite a few people who sounded like SE Asian Chinese, and a whole busload of middle school students from Kirishima. Yeah, from my first stop of the trip! Back when I still felt OK!

The island were quite pretty but it got slightly cold and very windy today. I took the cab up to the viewpoint and it wasn’t any warmer. Also, there was nothing other than a field of flowers and a viewpoint. No buildings other than a toilet.

I wasn’t about to sit and wait an hour and 15 minutes for the bus so I took the cab back to my hotel. I’m wondering about my love for Toyoko Inn. The rooms are clean, cheap, and fairly spacious. You get a “free” small breakfast. But the walls are very thin which can be offset by using earplugs. And it’s also the only hotel where I’ve ever seen the police. And today, the lobby was crawling with police. I think the patrons were being Japanese Karens and called the police because they thought they were being slighted because later I saw them standing outside. I also overheard one of them telling the police to do their job. I dunno. Made me kind of wary but I’ve not had any trouble. LIke I said, clean, spacious, cheap, and a bit loud.

So I ticked off a few things off my Sasebo list. The other thing was to eat Sasebo food. I wanted to get a Sasebo burger for lunch and I was told I should try the lemon steak for dinner. Fortunately there was a quaint Showa era-ish restaurant right at the station. And the food was quite tasty.

The lemon steak was great. It comes with a yakiniku-style sauce and was completely cooked on that hot plate. They bring it out to you and you need to flip it to cook both sides. The meat was called Nagasaki wagyu and I believe it. After you finish the meat you can put the rest of the rice on the hot plate to soak up the sauce. I wasn’t completely full so I ordered a Sasebo burger as well. For ¥800 how big could it be?

It’s hard to tell from the picture because all you can see is the lettuce but it had tomato, a good-sized patty, and the sauces were mustard mayo and something also close to yakiniku sauce. The beef had the weird bitter/medicinal taste that some Japanese hamburgers have but it was quite good. I’d say it tasted a little like a homemade Mos Burger but about 1.5x the size. I was quite full.

And now I’m in my room taking it easy. The acupuncturist told me the best thing is if could get more sleep. Well I’m in bed for at least 8 hours a night. I wanted to say, “More sleep? Maybe if the GD hotels didn’t stick me in a furnace and you guys legalized what I use for a sleep aid (it grows in fields in Oregon if you need a hint) I would be sleeping just fine!” Can’t have it all, I guess.

Earlier today I was thinking I haven’t done anything today and I’m pretty OK with that. Then I remembered a couple of things. I stayed two nights in an expensive hotel in Nagasaki (which turned out to have another hideously hot room) for one real reason, to see the Atomic Bomb Museum. I tell people they don’t NEED to see the bomb museums but I figured after coming here a second time, I really should. I did that today and it was, as you would expect, very sobering. I went to the Hiroshima museum years ago and it’s something I only need to do once in my life. Oddly enough there was a book at my gradeschool that showed all the pictures from the Hiroshima museum. Anyway, I’m guessing no one reads this and looks at my iffy food pictures, so here’s breakfast.

The hotel appears to have a deal with a local restaurant and it’s a bit of a walk, but the breakfast was great.

I had an OK night of sleep in my hot room but I really screwed up my back yesterday and it’s kind of unbearable. Some of the shorter seats in Japan make it worse. Anyway, after breakfast I limped my way to the museum and walked around the Peace Park. Here’s the hypocenter monument (the only picture I have of the area). I just wasn’t in the happiest mood, as you’d expect.

Nagasaki is in a small valley and there are lots of hills. Going up stairs is very painful right now and the only thing that really makes things better is rest, especially lying down. You really can’t do that in public. There are LOTS of stairs from the park to the museum, but luckily there are also elevators for older people (and me right now). You can see the clouds gathering and by the time I got my sad self out of the museum it was pouring.

One good thing about all the weird apps on my phone is my Japanese phone app. And my sister has a friend in Nagasaki who I called to ask about chiropractors. She says she never goes and her husband just goes to real medical clinics for his problems but she asked some coworkers who told me to try an acupuncturist. It’s a fairly quick streetcar ride there but I took a taxi. ¥2200-ish rather than ¥140, but it was raining and when I did the math it was only about $14US at the current exchange rate.

The acupuncturist was quite good but unfortunately, it didn’t completely clear up my back. I’ve had back problems in the past and there’s usually no quick fix. Plus, rain. Here’s a picture out of the front window.

It took about 3 hours because I just walked in. First they had me lie on a “water bed”. It felt like a foam bed with a gadget that squeezed my feet, but I guess there’s a rubber mat underneath and water jets that gently massage your back in interesting patterns. Then I went in and he did some manipulation similar to what my Osteopath does. Then the needles were inserted and pulled out. I’m used to going to a Chinese practitioner who left the needles in and attached electric doo-hickeys that shocked me for 20 minutes or so.

I made it back to the hotel and thought about getting lunch. It was about 2pm and there were huge lines at the restaurants. I just grabbed a Nagasaki pork bun and took it back to the hotel where I rested for the afternoon. I continue to skip lunch for the most part.

Then I went out to look for dinner. The restaurants in the building attached to the hotel seemed to be national chains and not especially Nagasaki-like, so I walked back to the station to get some champon. Unfortunately that’s when my back started to hurt quite a bit. The picture is bad because I was distracted and started eating before I remembered to take a picture.

I was scrunched into a booth that made things more painful and after a couple more bites I stood up to see if that would make things better and it did not. It hurt enough that I had to give up. I asked if I could take it to go and they said no, as I expected. It’s not something they do in Japan. But they did let me switch to a table and that worked. I also forgot to get my 5% hotel discount on the way out, but I did schedule another appointment with the acupuncturist for tomorrow morning. I’ll be seeing less of Sasebo, but if my back keeps hurting like this there’s no way I’d enjoy myself there.

Oh, and I did finally remember that I had ibuprofen with me the whole time. I just took some but I’m in for the evening so I won’t be able to tell unless I try walking up some stairs and there’s no way I’m going to try that. Time for some Netflix, I guess. I rejoined just for this eventuality, so I might as well.

Well, today didn’t go completely well but what can you do? It was an adventure day. I took a bus to a ferry to a train to another train. On the way I tweaked my back some more and by the time I made it to Nagasaki I was beat. I was just going to grab some dinner and then hide in my room and I heard fireworks. I had to lean over the desk so I could see out the window, but I watched a bunch of fireworks that looked about half a mile away.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Like I said, Route Inn is better than I always expect. I guess the problem is it’s kind of drab and the lobby looks like some downtown office building but the rooms are fine (if not a little dark). I got up and got some breakfast at the hotel.

It was pretty good besides the coffee. And there was one weird thing: the rice was dispensed out of a machine that looked like a big coffee machine. Push the button and rice came out. A dude next to me showed me how it worked and gave me a bowl. Without him I would’ve been lost.

I went back to my room and packed only to realize that the bus to the port didn’t come that often. And I was expecting more people at Kumamoto station but I guess Sunday morning is pretty quiet.

The whole thing was pretty easy. Not too many people on the bus ride to the port and there are two ferries that go to the same place. The faster one takes 30 minutes and costs a little more. The slower one takes about an hour I think. I forget, since I didn’t take that one.

It was a nice day and I saw what the cabbie meant about the seagulls. They were swooping in the wake of the other ferry trying to get fish.

It was hot in Shimabara and it’s a lot bigger than I expected. There’s springs that were formed after an earthquake and there’s a couple of places where they have koi in the pools by some houses. I went to see those and paid ¥400 just to sit and have some more tea.

Somehow I got roped into seeing the castle. It’s a reproduction and not even original construction but it’s the third tallest castle in Japan. And that’s when I found out that going up the stairs made my back hurt even worse. But I was already on the way up the stairs to see outside. I was in so much pain that I breezed through and didn’t take any picture. Also there were lots of traditional samurai artifacts that had Christian themes. Not my cup of tea.

The reason I went was to get some stamps on a card. They give you a postcard and if you make it to all of the stamps, they overlap to form a picture of the castle. Unfortunately, no one told me one of the stamps is at the top of the castle and I didn’t carry my card up there. I was almost in tears on the way up so there was no chance I was going up a second time. My back hurt so much that I got a cab to the train station which wasn’t very far away.

The train only came once an hour and it was a One Man Car, run like the bus. You grabbed a ticket on the way in and that determined your fare.

I pre-paid for a ticket that took me all the way to Nagasaki and transferred onto a much newer two-car train. For some reason the seats on this train were just the right height to make my back start hurting again.

By the time I made it to the hotel I was beat. I figured I’d make it out to get dinner but then I’d just watch some YouTube videos in my room. I found some toruko rice (Turkish rice) which really is thought to be a shortening of “tri-color rice” and not Turkish rice. It’s a Nagasaki specialty and I pretty much missed lunch so it tasted delicious. The store in the station had hundreds of items on the menu which were basically just different versions of toruko rice. I couldn’t go through them all so just asked what the most popular ones were. I got the hayashi rice & croquette version. You can see the croquettes under the white sauce, some spaghetti, a hamburger with some white sauce on half, and the orange at the top is some salad.

Ahd then it was time to watch videos. I’m way behind on the channels I subscribe to and in the middle of watching one of the videos I heard the fireworks. A window at the end of the hallway would’ve been a perfect place to watch, but I was already in my hotel sleepwear so I just leaned over my desk and looked out at the fireworks. It was too uncomfortable to watch the whole thing, but I did see a lot of it.

And that’s about it for the evening. Unfortunately, the room is now incredibly warm (it’s Japanese winter heating even though it was 77F today). I don’t sleep well unless it’s a little cold so we’ll see how I do. I guess I could leave the window open but we’re right near Nagasaki station and the noise would probably be worse for my sleep than the heat. Oh well.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to be awful with 1” of rain and thundershowers. I’m going to see the Atomic Bomb museum so it’s sure to be a great day.

There always seems to be something going on that I’m “missing”. When I was at the hotel in Ibusuki, there was a muffled announcement and I couldn’t make out the time or what it was for. I skipped the mystery event (honestly I was about to pass out). Today at the Kumamoto JR station they were selling round-trip train tickets to a fireworks show but it seemed like it would be another ordeal with crowds so I skipped that too. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I thought it would take too long to get from Kagoshima to Nagasaki so I planned a stopover in Kumamoto. I kind of like it here but I also am unclear on what there is to do. I started out with another interesting breakfast that’s the specialty of Amami-oshima, a kind of ochazuke that you assemble yourself:

Basically it all goes on top of the rice and you pour tea on it.

It was, as I expect from Kagoshima, great. I ended up with just about all of it in the ochazuke except for the benishoga pickled ginger. I think it overpowers the flavors so I only used half.

Then I started what I thought would be another long day of travel. I’m not much of a train otaku, but here’s a picture of the Kagoshima streetcar.

I got to the train station early because I was trying out the smartEX shinkansen tickets that allows the ticket to be put onto a Suica card rather than having to carry around a bunch of slips of paper. It could’ve been a disaster. It didn’t work and I had lots of help from the stationmaster who made me prove I actually had a ticket. Logging on was a chore and first I got this next screen. It started out at 7 minutes and took longer.

It all seemed to work out after a while but the stationmaster took my phone and did SOMETHING with it so he might’ve fixed things. But then I went back and asked why it didn’t tell me what my seat assignment was. Turns out the turnstile spit out a piece of paper that I missed and they had to pull it out of the gate mechanism for me. So much for avoiding fiddly bits of paper. At least getting the initial ticket was a lot quicker than standing in line at the Midori-no-madoguchi.

Turns out after all that the train was an express that skipped all the intermediate stations and only took 45 minutes. I dropped my bag off at the hotel and went back to the train station to consult the tourist information booth about what there is to do now. There are lots of big new buildings by the station that went up in the four years since I visited last. I guess the castle rebuilding continues apace but they still aren’t letting you see much. I found out there’s a garden that the local lord initially created as a tea garden. It doesn’t take long to see but it was worth it.

There used to be a Buddhist temple here. Now there’s a Shinto shrine and I guess it’s the season for kids to visit the temple for shichi-go-san. Basically it means lots of people in traditional dress getting their pictures taken.

There were also Shinto wedding pictures being taken but I didn’t want to intrude on that. Once again here’s proof that I’m no good at food pictures. I was already into eating my sweets and matcha before I remembered to take a picture. My sister gets lots of my pictures of half-eaten meals when I meant to send her pictures before I started. It’s always fun to have some traditional sweets at the garden.

Since I’m so good at doing things in the wrong order, I looked at the pamphlet describing the garden on the way out. It said the treasures of the shrine were displayed in November so I went around asking about it. I guess it’s not really that big a deal and they show them when they show them (not today). But there was a small exhibit of some yabusame mounted archery items and some artwork in a small building just off the parking lot. They had a display of rather ephemeral art – sand paintings that need to be protected from the wind.

And what they use to create the sand paintings:

By now you’ve probably noticed I missed lunch again. My back started to hurt so I went looking for the massage chain I frequent and there was one right at the station! My back still hurts but now my calves hurt as well. It’s getting better.

For dinner I was recommended a restaurant that serves horsemeat and I had some basashi (raw horsemeat). This cost as much as a regular dinner and was just about an appetizer.

Rather than eat more at this restaurant, I went to Mos Burger. Last year it was quite disappointing which seemed odd since it’s always been a reliable hamburger chain. I can report that it’s just as good as it used to be. It’s not everyone’s favorite, but the TabiEats guys agree that it’s their favorite. It’s my favorite as well.

And that’s about it for the day. I went shopping for some more cables and FamilyMart socks (whee).

The Route Inn chain where I’m staying is both underwhelming and better than a lot of hotels. The rooms are clean and larger than most and they usually have a large bath. It seems a little boring but it’s very good. I had a discussion with the front desk that made me sound like an idiot when I asked if it was summer or winter (no it’s fall they said). What I meant is whether the HVAC was set to summer or winter mode. It’s in winter mode even thought Kumamoto, to me, is the hottest place I’ve been so far and ideal summer weather for this Oregonian (in the mid 70’s Fahrenheit and humid). I have a hard time sleeping when it’s too warm so that isn’t going to help things.

Off to Nagasaki tomorrow which includes a ferry ride. More adventure!

Actually, I’m feeling better about the hotel now. It’s kind of run down and in the middle of nowhere but really I need to do more research before I show up places. It makes for more adventure, sometimes more than I need. This hotel is an old school onsen resort, one that’s kind of on its way down, but it’s fine and it wasn’t expensive. If you get the right train it’s less than an hour and a half from Kagoshima-chuo station and most of the staff were a crack-up. I got lost several times and they all said something like, “This place isn’t really that convenient.” That’s not something I’d expect to hear from Japanese people. I guess that’s why I like Kagoshima so much.

And the food was great. I’m not sure if this breakfast was better or if the APA Hotel breakfast was better, but like the guy on the trolley today told me, “The food in Kagoshima is great.”

Jet lag has really hit. After an awful night of waking up over and over, I finally was dead asleep when the alarm went off. I dragged myself up and I was going to hit the onsen in the morning but I checked my email, like a dummy, and I missed my chance. But I ate too much again which was a good thing later on because finding lunch turned out to be an ordeal.

I got on the train back to Kagoshima-chuo and I was surprised at how quickly we got to the city and how crowded the train got.

Kagoshima-chuo station was packed (it is a national holiday today) and the tourist information bureau had a sign that said, “Expect the tour buses to be sold out because a cruise ship arrived today.” I talked to several couples from the ship because, as my sister says, I’m one of those old guys who talks to everyone. There are also lots of foreigners in Kagoshima who look like they live here and I want to join them. It is a lot warmer than I like but I can deal with that. I bet it would be much easier than slipping on ice.

In any case, I was confused by the lack of streetcars and I was told that today is the biggest festival in Kagoshima. Several main roads were closed. I took a taxi rather than trying to figure out which re-routed bus would get me closest to the hotel. I left my bag and this is what it looked like outside the front door of the hotel:

It’s a wide street and the grass-covered median is actually the trolley tracks between the two lanes. The dancers went down one side and up the other. The crowds got much worse after I crossed the street. They’d stop the dancing every few songs to let people cross.

At some point I talked to a local Brit and he said there was a Tokyo Disneyland parade coming which was the big attraction. I got as close as I could and waited in the heat.

There were a bunch of gradeschool marching bands playing quite well along with a couple of other marching bands and we waited. And then I saw it, Mickey and Minnie on the first bus, Donald and Daisy on the second. You can’t see them but Goofy and Pluto were on the back of the first bus and Chip & Dale were on the back of the second.

At this point I realized how little I cared about Mickey and let a mom stand in the great spot I found. I still got to see everything. Everyone else seemed to be taking a video and were much more excited about this than I was.

And then I wandered through the crowds to try to find some lunch. The lines were horrible and all the streets away from the festival were packed.

I saw multiple ambulances called and I wonder if it wasn’t because of a section of the festival called “Shochu Street.” An older gentleman excitedly told me it was the first time they’ve held it in 4 years. Later when I was talking to a cruise couple from LA when we saw an older gentleman do a faceplant directly into a building. He finally got up and was being belligerent with his wife. They refused help from passers-by.

About 1:30 pm I headed back towards the hotel and got a greasy bag containing yakitori and grilled pork sticks. It was great and I can say I had the festival experience without standing in line. It was at the edge of the festivities and the crowds there had died down.

One of the most popular things today looked like a whole potato spiral cut, stuck onto a 2-foot stick, and I think fried. I didn’t get a picture, but the lines were long for those wherever they were located.

After that I checked into my hotel and sat inside for about an hour before I headed out for coffee. This shop was on the “People of Kagoshima” YouTube channel and the owner won a prize for being one of the best baristas in the world. He wasn’t there, but the coffee was very good.

Then I wandered around. Come to think of it, this is when I saw the drunk guy faceplant into the building. I also saw a “Furuits Parlour”.

The rest of the day didn’t get many pictures. I went to several different Daiso stores (¥100 shops) and bought some dumb things I was excited to get like a jar opener (¥100!) and a short two-prong power cord (OMG, ¥300). They didn’t take Suica but they did take my AMEX on my iPhone.

The third Daiso was back at Kagoshima-chuo station, about a mile away. On the way I went by the only gasoline station I’ve been to in Kagoshima where I refueled a rental car in 2019. The cab drove me by it earlier so I figured I was destined to take a picture of it.

On the way back to the hotel I got on the streetcar and asked a guy what the next station was (the announcement was severely muffled) and he got two other people involved. Everyone is so helpful down here. He’s from Kagoshima, but lives in Osaka right now, He’s the guy who said the food down here is great and I agree! And the size of the portions is big even by US standards. I had a hard time finishing my dinner of tonkatsu.

And I thought I’d get another early night but yeesh, I had a heck of a time trying to use the smartEX app to buy a bullet train ticket. I hope it worked. We’ll see tomorrow morning.

I stayed at an APA Hotel in Kirishima Kokubu near the airport and there isn’t much around there. Like most APA Hoels, it looked like it needed some repairs/updating, but it was fine. I got breakfast in the hotel because a lot of times I travel to places I’m unfamiliar with and I’m not sure I can get a small breakfast set (like coffee and pizza toast) like I usually get in Osaka or Tokyo or other large towns. I can usually find a combini and make do with the food there but if I’m unlucky that’s all there is to eat in the area.

Back to breakfast, it was a Japanese breakfast buffet and aside from the coffee, it was excellent. Even the natto was great and instead of Japanese mustard, it had a seaweed mix in.

I was still a little hungry after that but I figured I’d have lunch and extra snacks. Oh boy was I wrong.

Kirishima doesn’t look that small but there isn’t a whole lot going on. The best part was probably breakfast but it’s a tie with how friendly the older people were. There was an old lady on the train with me who told me that there’s fewer than one train per hour and it takes forever to get to Kagoshima (the main town). The train stops for 15 minutes at various stations to let other trains make connections. It took a couple of hours to get to Kagoshima, and then another couple of hours to get to Ibusuki where I was headed for the day.

Oh boy was that second train a pain. There’s even less going on down that direction and there’s only one track. I started the trip with my IC card payment (my Suica card) and there was an announcement about how I’d have to talk to the train operator if I went further than three stops. I was going to the end of the line. When I got to the end of the line, the guy said I was supposed to end my trip at Kagoshima and then buy a paper ticket for the rest of the trip. Also, my Suica card is what I usually use to pay for almost everything and it’s locked in the middle of a trip.

When I got off the train, I was in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, there was a bathroom at the station and when I got out there was only a sign with the number of several taxi services. The other guy waiting told me he called for a cab but I should take it and he’d call his dad for a ride. I took the cab to the hotel and it was only about 1PM and the check-in time was 4PM. I left my bag in their care and went to find the main attraction of the area, hot sands where they bury you in a layer of sand as you lay there.

My mom and aunt went a while ago and my sister said it sounded fun. It definitely is fun, but less than an hour. There was 20 minutes of waiting while they slowly checked people in. I got my yukata and towel for about ¥1500 and they told me to put my stuff in a locker and just wear nothing but the yukata and bring the small towel. Then you take a long walk down the promenade to the beach, and there’s an area they have tented where people get buried in the sand, but it says to get out after 10 minutes or you might get cooked. Then you go back, strip off your yukata, wash off the sand that you can, and then head to an onsen bath where I had to wash myself repeatedly to get all the sand off. That took another ten minutes. The whole thing took less than an hour, but it was fun.

There were a LOT of foreigners there from France, China, Korea, Australia, and even Poland. A lot of that I got from listening to them speaking, but the Polish guy was nice. What I realized is that there are LOTS of instructions and 90% of them are in Japanese. I had to tell the Polish guy some of the stuff, and there was a Chinese guy who didn’t know which door to go to next.

After that, there’s absolutely NOTHING to do. At about 2PM I started walking towards the only other attraction in the area, a reproduction of an ancient town I think, but after seeing ZERO Cocacola vending machines I headed back towards the hotel. I found ONE convenience store, a Lawson, and I had their chicken with tartar sauce inside. I would’ve taken more pictures, but I stood outside and inhaled them. It was all I had for lunch.

And then it was off to the hotel. I figured if nothing else I’d sit in the waiting area and catch up on all the junk email I get. On the way, however, I found another reason not to move to this area:

I made the image smaller because it’s horrid enough at this size.

Walking up to the hotel, I noticed a lot of flaws in the exterior and some inside as well. The rooms are OK. It just seems a bit old and need of renovation. Check out the elevator doors on the fifth floor:

But what I was waiting on was dinner and that was great. I suppose the only thing not great was the loud party of elderly people across the room, but what are you going to do about that?

I felt like i needed something other than water to drink so I had a non-alcoholic beer. I felt a little buzzed but I think it was the jet lag kicking in. BTW, the raw meat in the box on the lower left is raw pork for shabu-shabu in the sterno-fired, metal lidded dish above it.

I didn’t even go to the onsen here because i already went to another one earlier today. And the hotel even has a sand bath in-house. I guess the trick here is to not show up until 4pm and then do all of the sand bathing and regular bathing at the hotel.

Well, I made it. I told myself I wasn’t going to bed at 8pm and it’s 9:10pm now. Time to call it a day.