Jitchō

Our pass let us go on the Ibusuki express, so we did. Best train trip for ages! Tickets were bought at the special counter at the main station, where the staff were always extraordinarily helpful - wherever we were. We caught a local milk-run train down to Ibusuki, with a stop in the middle of nowhere, where we walked around for 45 inutes or so to see village life (there was none) and waited for the train out of town. At Ibusuki we wandered across to the coast and down past the hot-spring baths. They were a tin-roofed section of the beach where people walked in robed up, then let themselves be buried (partly) in hot and steamy black sand. As we walked along the rain started, so we had lunch (we had it with us) sitting with our feet in a warm bath in another tin-roofed little footbath in a park. There was also one at the station, and if we had known how good they were (and brought a towel) we'd have tried it, too. Then the Ibusuki Express back to Kagoshima: wood-and-glass-panelled, sideways facing, lots of room and power points.

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