I didn’t miss the train this morning and even got there a little early. Took the free bus from the hotel and got there with time to spare. Unfortunately, the coffee shop was out of most of the morning set items, but I did get something.

The train was kind of a mess. The Green car was a Green half-car, and there’s only 11 or 14 seats. Let’s say 14. It was full of one family that was loud with two little kids that ended up crying at one point. So 13 of the 14 seats were grandparents and parents and two kids. They were uncharacteristically loud for Japanese people and they were annoying me. But they got off at Kirishima-jingu and I had the car to myself for the rest of the trip.

The volcano was still going at it as well.

When I arrived I noticed my hotel wasn’t next to the station. AGAIN. And it was raining (thanks for telling me it was nice weather.com) so I took a cab. I got there around 12:30pm and started looking for lunch. Found a place next door with a craft beer sign and vegetable-heavy lunch specials so I went in. The clientele was mostly women but there were two guys and, more important, the food was great.

After that it was off to Miyazaki Jingu, where the first emperor of Japan was enshrined. Google is useless here (I guess it’s too far off in the sticks) and I had to use Navitime which also has its issues (the walking map is horrid).

I went to the Miyazaki Prefectural Museum of Nature and History to find out more about this area. For an area that was so important long ago, it sure isn’t much now. The museum isn’t that big, but I liked it. Mostly local history, and that’s what I was looking for. It was different from the sort of history they talk about in castles (not as much about battles and such) but I think that’s because the first emperor this area was defeated and the land was subsumed into the Satsuma area of Kagoshima.

Getting back was a little odd. Navitime sent me in loops around the museum and I walked for about half an hour to get to a bus stop. The bus took me back to the museum before going on to the hotel. Sheesh.

I got back to the hotel and took it easy for an hour until dinnertime. I was told about some local craft breweries so I went looking for a taproom. I should’ve known it wasn’t going to happen when people kept telling me to go to the gift store and just buy bottles there. Google sent me down this deserted-looking street (which is right off of a main street by the way).

Well, the taprooms were closed but the owner of one was there and told me that ALL the taprooms with craft beer are closed on Mondays. I mean really, f*ck this place.

I went walking around to make sure all the taprooms were closed (they were) and even asked a liquor store if they had any local beers. They told me to go to the gift shop as well.

I made it to the gift shop as they were closing. Luckily, they weren’t completely closed.

I wanted to keep the beer cold so I took it back to the hotel and I had to go back out for dinner. The front desk suggested a couple of places and I picked number one on the map, Ogura Honten, where I had Chicken Nanban. That stuff is great. Fried chicken with tartar sauce. I could eat it all the time.

I got over being mad at Miyazaki after that. I made it back to the hotel and tried the two beers I bought.

I really liked the Hideji Beer pale ale and I thought it may have been a good thing that Aozora was closed because the IPA wasn’t to my liking. I think I decided it was because they used Simcoe hops and it also didn’t seem to be aged enough.

And that’s about it for Miyazaki. There are a few more places I’d want to go, but none are that close and would require a longer stay. I’d need more of a reason to stay, though. And the funny thing is, I’ve had four or five people tell me my Japanese is very good. I dunno. This place seems a little off to me.

Somehow I knew I’d blow the time on one of my trains or something and I’m hoping that this is my one and only screw up this trip. One previous year I booked a seat on the Narita Express for the wrong day. I was lucky that I had a rail pass so they let me ride anyway, but it was just dumb on my part.

I was planning on going on the Ibusuki and Chiran tour today. I took a free shuttle from my hotel and got to the bus stop early and didn’t see anyone. I thought the bus was leaving in 15 minutes instead of 5 so I left to eat breakfast.

Basically, I missed the bus by five minutes. That left me with no plan but I then I came up with the wild idea to rent a car to drive to the “southernmost point” of Japan. The real southernmost point of Japan is an island most of the way to Taiwan, but the old geography courses used to teach that Japan was defined by the four main islands. I wasn’t even sure if I could get to the southernmost point and I wasn’t planning on renting another car. Heck, I was nervous enough renting the first one. But it was time for another adventure. I consulted with my buddy at the tourist bureau who sent me to Orix Rentacar. They gladly rented me a compact car and told me which ferry to take and where to gas up the car on the way back. They even apologetically sold me the most expensive insurance which cost less than $20. Off I went to find the ferry in South Kagoshima City, trying to decipher signs as I drove. Here’s the gray car I rented.

Let’s see, I must’ve started around 9AM. There was a 40 minute ferry ride across to the opposite peninsula and we went by the volcano “island” again. The bus driver from the hotel told me that there was a lot of ash on the cars today and I saw the reason. The volcano was being active again.

So off I went with my rudimentary understanding of the Japanese GPS to Cape Sata. Lots of driving down the coastline, which was beautiful, but it took 2 ½ hours or more to get to the cape. And I was “speeding”. The speed limit varied from 40 to 50kph which is 25 to 30mph. I was doing 30 – 35mph.

I got down to the cape and it was HOT. Well, there’s an explanation. 100m from the parking lot for Cape Sata is this monument that says you’re at the 31st parallel which also runs south of California thorug Baja California, and through Texas.

At Cape Sata there’s a tourist information counter and then a 20-minute walk to an observatory. That’s as far south as the path goes and I wasn’t sure which was further south: the end of the path or the ruins of the ruins of the lighthouse quarters. I went to both just in case.

Do I really look this goofy?

It was pretty out here, too.

I could even see the mountain I would’ve been next to to if I hadn’t missed the tour bus (the conical one in the middle distance).

On the way back I stopped at the souvenir shop and they gave me a postcard commemorating my visit to the southernmost point. They said I could’ve gotten a card for the northernmost point. I also asked if there was anything to see on the way back and they told me to see Ogawa Falls. This was a spectacular Google Maps fail. I couldn’t find it on the car GPS and Google took me to the top of the falls through windy one-lane country backroads. The top of the falls is unspectacular. There’s a viewpoint where you can see down into the valley and down to where I really wanted to be.

It’s quite a drive down around to the mouth of the valley and then narrow windy roads up to the parking lot for the dam. From the parking lot there’s a 30-minute walk along the river up to the viewpoint. it was a pretty walk, though.

Yes it was humid, but the waterfall was spectacular. A lot of the water came from springs in the face of the cliff.If you look towards the top left of the cliff you can see a pole. I think that’s part of the hydroelectric plant you can see at the top of the falls. If this was a video, you could also see a flashing ramen sign from up there.

Then it was time to get back. I was tired of all the driving (it wasn’t freeway driving and would it kill a guy here to make a straight road?)

The volcano was still going.

I got back to town, filled up with gas, and returned the car. Then I hit the train station department store for some dinner. I think I overdid the carbs.

If the people next door stop slamming their goddamn door, I may get some extra sleep tonight.

Well, I didn’t feel great this morning (or most of the day) but I was all set to take the two half-day bus tours. First, I went to the closest coffee shop to the hotel but that didn’t turn out to be very close and it was in the opposite direction from the main train station, where the tour started.

I took a cab to the station and got on the bus.

 

The morning tour was to Sakurajima, the volcano “island” in the bay right across from Kagoshima.

 The bus drove straight onto the ferry. There was a big concert going on so the Sakurajima Ferry was crowded.

It was hot today (I guess it’s usually hot this far south in Japan) and we drove around the island. The first stop was at the observation point. You can’t go much further up the mountain because it’s still active and the area is restricted for people’s safety.

Then it was down and around the shore. Most of the stories here were about the most recent huge eruptions. Here’s a shrine gate that was buried by lava!

I put “island” in quotes because the most recent large eruption in the 1950’s connected the island to the peninsula across from Kagoshima. I guess there was a dangerous fast-running current in the small space between the island and the peninsula before they were connected.

It was hot, and most of the areas we visited had no shade!

We made it back and we weren’t that far behind schedule. I even had time for lunch. A beef bowl (yes there’s rice under there). Was it good? I’d tell you if it wasn’t.

The second tour was around the city and most of it was all about Saigo Takamori, the “last samurai.” I didn’t take a lot of pictures because there were museums, graveyards, placards in front of parking lots, etc, and the only interesting things to take pictures of were shots out the bus window as we drove by. That never works well. I’d definitely recommend the tour, though.

I do have a couple more pictures of the volcano, though.

We ended up at Sengan-en, the gardens and house of a feudal lord that also had an iron smelting plant on-site. They made weapons near this site, but that’s gone as well.

A couple of older women kept talking about jambomochi, and of course I had to try them as well. I think they only have them here, in or near this garden, and they’re tasty.

I had the same 71-year-old bus guide on both trips and I think the same driver as well. It was a fun day. I don’t think you can really see them through the window.

And then it was dinner. I ended up waiting a while to get into a shop that seemed to be in the basement of an office building. They warned me I was wording the “big” tonkatsu and I should’ve heeded the warning. I always hate how the Korean people who run Japanese restaurants in Portland serve such thin pork cutlets and call them “tonkatsu.” This one is close to an inch thick! I had to waddle back to the hotel.

And that’s it for today (and I’m sticking to soft drinks for the moment!)

Oh boy, I had a couple more beers than I should’ve. But I’m getting ahead of myself because that happened at the end of the day.

I finally found a coffee shop that opened at 8am (Okayama’s a lot bigger than Sakaiminato) and that alone was a huge win. I’ve eaten at conbini a lot the past few days.

There were a bunch of mascots around trying to promote an event I won’t be around for.

Then I got on the Shinkansen to Kagoshima, the southernmost Shinkansen stop.

The first part of the trip I think I was the only Asian in my car. I wondered if everyone was heading for Hiroshima, and sure enough a bunch of people got off. But the same number of non-Asian people (by non-Asian I mean whitey) got on. I checked the World Cup Rugby schedule and I figured they’d get off at two different station. Sure enough, after the two stops I thought, it was just me and a few Asians.

In the middle of all that I had a pretty good ekiben from Okayama.

When I got off the train I wondered what I was thinking. I should’ve found a way to stay up north. It’s not THAT hot, but with the humidity it sure seems hot to me.

And of course I got lost. In preparation I looked up the WRONG train station and the WRONG hotel, so I thought I needed to be near the train station in the middle of town when I really was closer to the Shinkansen station. But I made it to the hotel pretty early and went back to the train station and asked the tourist bureau what I should go see. There were some bus tours that looked promising, but it was too late to do any of them. Kumamoto looked pretty spread out and, as I mentioned, it was HOT so I just asked if there was any beer to be had. I went to the closer place they mentioned and it had two craft beers: Yona Yona (from Tokyo) and something from Brooklyn Brewing. Yeesh. The kid there was nice and went to SWOCC! (Southwestern Oregon Community College in Coos Bay!) He suggested the other place that the tourist bureau also suggested.

THere’s a fancy hotel on the hill, the Shiroyama Hotel Kagoshima, and there’s a free bus to get up to it. It’s a fancy hotel, so when I got off the free giant shuttle bus, a dude with a bellman sort of uniform asked me what I wanted and he had to run in to find out where I could go. They sat me in a “bridal lounge” (a very sterile room) and I had the tasting set.

On my way out I had to ask where the beer was made. It was after 5pm but they said I could go down and check out the brewery! The brewer was quite friendly and used a lot of hops from Washington.

It’s a 250L system (approximately 2.5 barrels) and it takes two batches to fill the maturation tanks that are only 500L. We got to talking and he said I went to the wrong part of the hotel and there’s a bar with more taps. He gave me a couple tastes off the zwickel, a nice hazy and a Brut IPA.

On the way out he told me to check out a taproom not far from my hotel. The burgers there were great and they had a couple of Japanese craft beers on tap. They had the rugby game on, though, and I “had to” keep buying beers until it was over.

And that’s about it.

Sakaiminato continues to disappoint. On Google Maps I found some coffee shops that open “on time” in Yonago, so I thought I’d take an earlier train and grab breakfast in Yonago. Well, the short train to Yonago was delayed enough that I only had 30 minutes until my next train so I still ended up eating breakfast from 7 Eleven.

By the time I got back to the train station, I found out the train to Okayama was also delayed.

Well it was a nice calm ride back to Okayama, a place I’d been many times before. I decided to stay in a nicer hotel, though and my room at the Granvia is huge by Japanese standards. It’s even big for, say, San Francisco.

It was a very humid day and fortunately it didn’t rain very much. I was planning on just hanging out in the mall next door if it was too rainy. They’re having the Okayama Art Summit right now so I spent most of the afternoon visiting modern art installations. Most of the time I spent rather confused. Some of the installations are on the grounds of the castle, some are in random galleries. It was actually a lot of fun.

The big plans though were to meet my sister’s old co-worker and friend Yumi for dinner. Her brother and one of her marathon buddies (who I’ve met before) also came. It was a lot of fun and the other marathoner (who is a whiskey expert) gave me a small single-shot bottle of Yamazaki 12!

My original plans were just to hide out and maybe just hang out in the mall if it was too rainy and it was a lot more fun than that today.

(And that’s the reason why I relax at the Granvia. I like sitting in the room and just looking out the window.)

I took a bunch of pictures today but most of them are only interesting to me. Sakaiminato continues to disappoint me but I keep finding ways to amuse myself. I thought the coffee shops opened at 9am instead of the standard 8am, but it turns out it’s 10am today. So I decided to ask about how to get to Ejima/Eshima so I could see the bridge. I was considering taking a taxi across and back or renting a car, or just walking it. Well, it turns out there’s a 8:27am bus and there are only 3 buses per day. It was 8:25 or so and I asked where the bus was. The “bus” came right after I got outside and it was just a small van. I was the only rider! I got to chat with the driver and he said there’s really nothing on Eshima and the bridge looks more impressive from the other side.

Well the bridge ain’t much. The famous pictures of it are taken with a telephoto lens from a boat off the other side of the island. On foot there isn’t much to it, but I like doing this sort of thing. I even took my girlfriend to the world’s longest diagonal elevator. Before I started, though, I saw a FamilyMart and decided to get some breakfast since I still hadn’t eaten.

Just past the sign for the bort ride in Matsue that I didn’t take yesterday. It was too late in the day.

This is what I’m reduced to but the most annoying thing is that this damn little island had a better selection than Sakaiminato which appears to have way more people.

The view wasn’t bad, either. Past the parking lot is a big lake. Or is it a sound? Maybe it’s a sea.

Off I went, in the rain, to the bridge. This is the side that has the straight-on view that is more impressive. But with the wide-angle lens of my iPhone or with the naked eye, it doesn’t look that scary or steep. I think the whole thing is just and advertisement for the area.

I watched a YouTube video where the guy said it was like a rollercoaster. Nonsense.

It is a tall bridge though, with some nice views.

Oh, and the reason I didn’t notice this all is because from the Tottori side (where I came from yesterday) the bridge curves.

I couldn’t get any better pictures because I didn’t want to get run over in the middle of a busy road.

Ok, time to head back. But the first thing I found was a Daiso! (The ¥100 store – ¥110 with tax.) They didn’t have what I was looking for but I did get a couple things I needed and I was only out ¥220.

The next interesting thing I ran into was this sign, so I went in and looked at the placard next to a statue of the founder.

That’s Mr. Onitsuka, the president of Asics, who is from here and owned one of the three companies that merged into Asics, Onitsuka Tiger. Those are the shoes that started Nike.

And then I kept walking because, well, I forgot to call a taxi like my original plan. I didn’t mind walking through the farmland. I find it more peaceful than house after house.

I finally made it to the train station and found the next train was 27 minutes away and the hotel (where I needed to pick something up) was 23 minutes walking. It was humid and sweaty and I kept walking.

Around noon I headed towards Yonago to see the castle ruins. I don’t think they get many tourists because the guy at the tourist bureau went on and on. There’s an Aeon mall on the way so I stopped in for lunch. Most people were buying bentos from the grocery store and microwaving them in the “Eat in” corner but I went to the bakery and got a hot dog, curry pan, and a fondue pan.

Then it was off to the ruins. They were kind of impressive, but also kind of ruins.

Also, there were some stairs. Close to the top I saw a Asian giant hornet and I had to wait for it to calm down before I went by. I think it was nesting in the stairs.

But the walls were pretty neat and there was quite the view from the top.

The rest of the tour of the city was kind of a bust. I mean, the guy told me to check out a bridge and this is all it was.

I did find a craft brewery but it didn’t open until 5:30pm and I was too tired come back and put up with this sort of nonsense.

I went back to the station and found I just missed the train, so I went to the Aeon Mall because I saw they had a Mister Donut. Not the best doughnuts but still tasty and I always find it to be a nice place to rest.

They must’ve sensed that I’m a spoon thief because they didn’t give me one. I got back to the hotel, took a bath, and ate some Chip Star (Japanese Pringle’s) for dinner. And now somehow it’s bedtime. Not a bad day.

Staying in Sakaiminato was kind of a mistake. I knew that when I asked the lady from the tourist bureau on how to get to Izumo and how to get back and she said, “You’re coming back?” I had two different people laugh at me when I told them I made that mistake. One was a random older guy at the bus stop (probably my age) who said, “Yeah, you went for the yokai? I bet it’s a bit of a disappointment,” and the other was the guy at the Matsue JR Green window who kind of said, “Sakaiminato? Oh boy.” Honestly it wasn’t that bad.

There are some oddities, though. I went out looking for a coffee shop and found out they don’t open until 9AM! Seeing as how they all seem to close early, I don’t know what the point is in keeping banker’s hours. I had to walk past the hotel and in the opposite direction of the shopping street to find the Lawson which was very poorly stocked. I still got a tuna & egg sandwich set, a ham & cheese roll, a smoothie, and a can of coffee and ate it in my room.

Then it was off to Izumo Taisha, the oldest shrine in Japan. I took a big highway bus to Matsue, a train to Izumo, and then a city bus to Izumo Taisha.

I guess the train was the same one as the other day going from Tottori to Yonago. Lots of waiting around in between the train and the buses, and my lunch was some more combine food from 7 Eleven while I was waiting at Izumo station.

Anyway, the Izumo Taisha is one of the grand shrines and possibly the oldest one in Japan. I spent my time going around the grounds and it was HOT again.

I also went to see the treasures of the temple and proceeded to the Shimane Museum of Ancient Izumo where they have the archeological history of the area on display. Pretty cool.

Then I got on a couple more trains to get to Matsue Castle because why not? It’s on the way back. I took the local electric railway where they still use paper tickets and a conductor with a paper punch to show you got on.

It even had one of those weird turnarounds I never understand.

Turns out Matsue Casle one of the five castles that are National Treasures of Japan, and one of the few made of original timbers. Of course, since it was built in the 1600’s it’s been rebuilt but some of the original timbers are still there.

The train from Matsue to Yonago was listed as canceled on Google Maps so I had time to eat some so-so ramen at the train station.

Finally it was back on the same sort of train to get back to Yonago, and then a nondescript non-cartoon-wrapped train to Sakaiminato.

And another thing I found out – I was on that crazy bridge connecting Tottori Prefecture and Shimane Prefecture (look up the Eshima Ohashi bridge) and I didn’t even know it! Anyway, that’s it for today. Here’s a video of the beer robot that I hope shows up OK.