{"id":10802,"date":"2023-11-07T04:03:31","date_gmt":"2023-11-07T12:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=10802"},"modified":"2023-11-08T03:19:21","modified_gmt":"2023-11-08T11:19:21","slug":"japan-2023-day-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=10802","title":{"rendered":"Japan 2023: Day 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

After breakfast I packed up and made my way back to the acupuncturist and when I arrived my hip hurt so bad I couldn\u2019t sit and wait. I had to walk around outside. Luckily it was a much nicer day. And while he didn\u2019t fix everything, it was better afterwards.<\/p>\n

I got my train ticket to Sasebo. Usually there\u2019s 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\u2019t running today. That\u2019s 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\u2019s. The new station is scheduled to open on 11\/10 (yeah, Friday) so here\u2019s the view.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

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\u2019t bad but lava cakes are pretty much chocolate overload for me.\"IMG<\/p>\n

Oh, here\u2019s the building that would\u2019ve been nice if it was open.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

I took the toy shinkansen to the end of the route, a whole 30 minutes away. There\u2019s some feuding with Saga prefecture who vies for the bottom spot as the ugliest prefecture. I suppose the real list is \u201cthe most beautiful prefecture\u201d but I don\u2019t know what else you\u2019d call the bottom of that list.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

The seats were oddly made of wood as well.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

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\u2019d been on earlier in the week and it was quieter and, uh, steadier, and the seats were quite nice.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201ctoo many islands to count\u201d. 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 \u00a5140 and the taxi would be closer to \u00a54000.<\/p>\n

I got off the bus and found out I was on the last boat of the day!<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

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\u2019t any warmer. Also, there was nothing other than a field of flowers and a viewpoint. No buildings other than a toilet.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t about to sit and wait an hour and 15 minutes for the bus so I took the cab back to my hotel. I\u2019m wondering about my love for Toyoko Inn. The rooms are clean, cheap, and fairly spacious. You get a \u201cfree” small breakfast. But the walls are very thin which can be offset by using earplugs. And it\u2019s also the only hotel where I\u2019ve 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\u2019ve not had any trouble. LIke I said, clean, spacious, cheap, and a bit loud.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

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\u2019t completely full so I ordered a Sasebo burger as well. For \u00a5800 how big could it be?<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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\u2019d say it tasted a little like a homemade Mos Burger but about 1.5x the size. I was quite full.<\/p>\n

And now I\u2019m in my room taking it easy. The acupuncturist told me the best thing is if could get more sleep. Well I\u2019m in bed for at least 8 hours a night. I wanted to say, \u201cMore sleep? Maybe if the GD hotels didn\u2019t 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!\u201d Can\u2019t have it all, I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019t 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\u2019m 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 … Continue reading Japan 2023: Day 6<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10803,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10802\/revisions\/10803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}