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Japan 2023

November 2023
Kyushu and More Read more
  • 36footprints
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  • 26days
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  • 17.8kkilometers
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  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 1

    Sydney to Fukuoka

    November 2, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    An easy 9;15 am flight: JAL to Tokyo, land at 1640, a slightly rushed trip through Customs and then a false start and long walk back to find the bus to the other terminal. Not too long waiting, spent mostly looking in vain for an ATM for JPY, then a suitably dull 2 hour flight to Fukuoka. It was full of businessmen and businesswomen, but no service, so the first thing we needed in FUK was water!

    We landed around 8;35pm, found the only ATMs in Fukuoka Airport that let foreign cards withdraw yen, worked out the local transport options according to the airport signs rather than the books back in Sydney, then took the local train to the hotel. The train took less than half the time the travel sites gave for taxis, and was a lot more fun. A lot of counting stations and staring at screens each time the speakers played the gongs and the train stopped at somewhere new. There was one change involving a longish walk, but we ended up at the same station going somewhere else a few days later and felt like locals.

    We had booked a Best Western hotel because it had a room that was not too small and was in an area that wasn't too touristy... perfect. Even better when we arrived (around 945 local time) and the small foyer had no foreigners, but, oddly, large racks of combs, slippers, face-masks and toothbrushes!    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 2

    Fukuoka

    November 3, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 24 °C

    A day of walking around Fukuoka. The breakfast place in the on-line guide was not yet open, so on to the harbour, and finally found a place with coffee. We had not eaten since JAL to Tokyo, so almost anything would do...as long as it had wi-fi, coffee, tea and etc etc
    Then we walked through most of Fukuoka. It was sunny and quite warm (although November) but not crowded. We went to the fishmarket (for Philipp) when we saw the signs, on to a park and the site of an enormous old castle, across a lake, through more parts of the city, a subway trip and back for a very late lunch in a tiny bar/restaurant right next to the hotel. We ordered by pointing at pictures as we were yet to master Google Translate, then had to swap meals once they came, resulting in us both thinking it was fantastic, and extraordinarily cheap. More roaming afterwards - pachenko, backstreets, 7-11s, Lawsons, fish shops, supermarkets, parks. The app said 26,498 steps, or 18.9km for the day, and we climbed a mere 13 flights.. Not that we are competitive, but we did check the totals every day    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 3

    Nagasaki, Kyushu

    November 4, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 25 °C

    Bullet train to Nagasaki on our Kyushu pass, then back late afternoon. We walked to Hakata station, feeling we knew the route well enough to try small variations, and booked tickets with our pass. The people doing the bookings were amazing: the systems worked quickly, and they would give us a few options in English, then issue seat reservation cards that went with the pass, all neatly stashed away in a red "Kyushu rail" envelope.
    On the trip to Nagasaki the announcer apologised for a 3 min delay on a shinkansen, but I think the driver (if there was one) was happy sitting on 250kph or so. Wollstonecraft might have more frequent trains and perhaps more comfortable seats, but TfNSW can’t make your ears pop.

    Very sunny and a near perfect temperature for wandering around (except in the midday November sun).

    Walked to the Peace Park, then back through the back streets and the old merchant city. The epicentre area was sad, but it was almost consumed by light-industrial sprawl, as if even to the locals it did not really matter. Rumours that we too tried to mimic the statue are false ones created months later by one or both sons.

    Nagasaki has cats with bent tails. Out of pity, we didn't photograph the one we saw first... an then we didn't see another after we read that it was genetic. We walked along the bay that had had the only area in which westerners were permitted for several hundred years, and saw some rather grand houses that had been built by westerners once they were allowed to live other than on their dedicated island.

    Back in Fukuoka we walked to the hotel (15 mins), then back along the river near the station where street restaurants popped up at night. The guide books were very enthusiastic, but they were crowded and a little touristy (although not nearly as bad as the brightly-lit tourist ferries that karaoked their way up and down.

    23,281/16.95km and 15.    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 5

    Kagoshima, Kyushu

    November 6, 2023 in Japan ⋅ 🌧 23 °C

    15m walk to the main station, and breakfast at one of the bakery/cafes with lots of bread, tea and coffee. Checked in, then walked to the harbour and fish markets (closed) in surprising heat. There is a live volcano on an island just across the water, and it was smoking but not erupting while we were there. Lunch in the only restaurant that was there, but genuine Japanese, with us being the only non-locals. Walked back around town, up to a lookout where we spoke at length with a retired teacher, then back to our hotel, which was connected to the station and the ubiquitous railway-owned Westfield-style malls.Anne wanted yakitori for dinner, so we ended up at a booth in a side-street. 26,288 / 17.8kmRead more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 6

    Ibusuki

    November 7, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    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.

     22,385/14.95    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 7

    Back to Hakata Station: The Walk

    November 8, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    Explored Kagoshima's shops, checked out, caught the bullet train to Fukuoka (all without crossing a road), and met the Walk Japan people with guide Andrew Daniels (Yorkshireman 110%) at Hakata Station. We bought the usual lunch and caught a local train to a town (Nakatsu (Oita Prefecture) and a minibus to our first hotel at Yabakei complete with onsen (hot baths) and very Japanese dinner. A very traditional ryokan.

    Some people say Walk Japan should be Eat Japan. There is an Australian travel writer, two Singaporean Indians who are very much like Devika and Sanjiv from HK in 2000-2002, and four Americans. There was a fifth American, but she was stressed and went back home on Day 1. We were therefore mostly a group of 10. A mere 8859 steps, or 6.5km    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 7

    Hills and Tashibu

    November 8, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    A traditional Japanese 12,000 course breakfast plus coffee, then a minibus to the starting point, from whence we climbed Cloud Mountain (645m). That meant passing lots of Buddhist statues and Shinto shrines, as we did almost every day. The area was once the leading religious centre for Japan, and monks prayed, studied,walked and taught here, then back in other parts of Korea and Japan. It was also the time when religion became intertwined with secular rituals, so the Shinto / Buddhist shrines / temples were almost side-by-side. Lots of forests, too. We ended up at Usa Jingu (a huge complex that was once perhaps the most important shrine in Japan), lunch in a restaurant, then a mini-bus to another ryokan.. perhaps the best of the lot. It was next to Japan's oldest wooden temple, and the monk and his mother ran the hotel and cooked like Michelin starred chefs. there was also meditation in the temple at 7am the next morning....19,529/13.5km and 75 flights.Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 8

    Fuki-ji to Tashibu to Fuki-ji

    November 9, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ⛅ 22 °C

    Had to message Alistair early to say that in this 900 year old wooden temple his parents at 7am did a 15 min Zen meditation. He was surprisingly unresponsive, although it may have been midnight where he was...

    10 kms today, mostly in bamboo forests, then down to a village and along the edge of the paddy fields. Simple routine: breakfast, bus, temple, mountains, local restaurant for lunch, forest, paddy fields and back to the hotel. Saw one of Japan's most picturesque rural villages, but the population is declining and there are almost life-size dolls here and there to make it less lonely for the ageing population. 16,070/10.7km and 65    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 9

    Fuki-ji to Matama... chains needed

    November 10, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☁️ 17 °C

    Another Japanese inn tonight. Back to sleeping on the floor.
    Amazing 10 course breakfast, mini-bus, fields and farms, forests, temples, a stroll over hills and fields to another temple and a restaurant, and then a vertical climb in steady drizzle. you can pick us by the rain jackets, which by chance would say Ukraine. Not meant to be cryptic.

    Started at the shrine where Anne was ringing the bell, then through a forest, down to the stream and 1200yo rock carving, then up over the ridge behind it. Steep - hence chains and tiny paths In a photo there is a tiny bridge spanning a chasm between two pinnacles. We went up to near the bridge, but not across it: it is unstable after an earthquake a few years ago. A guide was at the restaurant and would be with us for several of the next few days. He started by taking us up the very steep cliff that had chains to help (impossible without?). He bowled along quite happily in gumboots that were a size too large so his feet did not get too sweaty.
    fter getting to the top, but not going on the earthquake-damaged stone bridge between peaks, and a long, slow but steep walk down to the hotel, where everyone went to the hot baths. 12,601/8.2km and 32 flights    Read more

  • TravelerJapan 2023
    Day 10

    Matama to Himeshima

    November 11, 2023 in Japan ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    Usual elaborate and endless breakfast, mini-bus to a ridge walk that needs its own album to describe it (see later), then a ferry to a small, old island, and a walk up to a lookout there with Sidd and Andrew. Anne dropped her sunglasses at one point, but the amazing Andrew went back and found them.

    The gardeners were snipping the pine tree needles with nail scissors to get them right, and had a ladder like ours, so that was a hint.

    Back in the hotel there was a small queue for the hot baths (we worked out an order, and then took it in turns to alert the next person when it was their turn), hot baths and dinner.

    Dinner was as good as ever, and all based on home-grown tiger prawns. For dessert, as an afterthought, the chef whipped out possibly the world's best creme brulee...

    16,749/11.2km and 151 flights... but not a record    Read more

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