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Japan 2023
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Japan 2023

Kyushu and More Les mer
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  • Reisens start
    2. november 2023
    Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Sydney to Fukuoka

    2. november 2023, 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!    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende
    First Japanese meal
    Bloody tea drinkers...Jumping ahead a day... hotel breakfasts

    Fukuoka

    3. november 2023, 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    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende
    Anne and her driver

    Nagasaki, Kyushu

    4. november 2023, 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.    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Kagoshima, Kyushu

    6. november 2023, Japan ⋅ 🌧 23 °C

    15m walk to the main station, and breakfast at one of the bakery/cafes with lots of bread, tea and coffee. Bullet train going south, and maybe only an hour or two, so we were in Kagoshima before lunch.

    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 / 17.8km    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende
    The station in the middle of the trip to IbusukiSmoke billows, attendants bow and the train arrives or leaves

    Ibusuki

    7. november 2023, 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    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Back to Hakata Station: The Walk

    8. november 2023, 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    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende
    Socks for discerning people?

    Hills and Tashibu

    8. november 2023, 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.Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Fuki-ji to Tashibu to Fuki-ji

    9. november 2023, 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    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Fuki-ji to Matama... chains needed

    10. november 2023, 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    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Matama to Himeshima

    11. november 2023, 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    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Those Eggshell Mountain Ridges

    11. november 2023, Japan ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    Imagine an old volcano with the rim weathered away to near-vertical on the outside and the inside, and perhaps half crumbled away. Then imagine monks finding a way to the top, and then making their way around, and then using slabs of rock to make the odd bridge across eroded chasms. Millenia or centuries later, tourists follow in their steps, with the help of ladders, chains and metal rungs bolted to the rocks, and sometimes guides. On a good day, the views are spectacular, so the adrenaline and scratches, bumps and bruises were all worth it. And next day, you do much the same again...Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Himeshima to Iwato-ji

    12. november 2023, Japan ⋅ ⛅ 9 °C

    Cold and windy. We walked around the island for a bit, saw the head man's very elaborate and large house, ferry back, lunch in an art gallery, drove to a temple and walked 7k to another- though forests and over hills. The hundreds of mossy stupas are c 1200 years old, but all the buildings around them disappeared centuries ago. Lots of up and down, and chains again for some tough slopes, but great scenery.

    An older hotel with the usual thermal spring bath and tatami floors. As a bonus, it snowed ... just a little

    Anne has sore quads: her son’s mother.

    18,799/12.8km    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Onsen

    13. november 2023, Japan ⋅ ☁️ 4 °C

    The hotels on the walking trip all had hot baths (geothermal). Some were in the room, some were on each hotel floor, some in a separate building. Most were male/Female, except Yufuin, where you simply booked it.
    Some hotels also had communal baths as well as private ones for guests ... Anne learnt all her technique in the public bath on the first night

    Yufuin and the first night had onsen open to the snow, wind, rain and outside world (with walls or screens).    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Monjusen-ji to Baien-no-Sato

    13. november 2023, Japan ⋅ ☁️ 8 °C

    We walked between two grand temples on forest tracks and then badly overgrown logging roads. Only a few spots with ropes there if needed, but a few endless flights of mossy stone steps at the beginning and end of the two big temples and a little one on the way. The forests were mainly 30m cedar trees, but centuries ago they were terraced fields on the temple land and supported thousands of people. Hence the occasional beautiful stone wall in the middle of nowhere, and crowds of lichen-covered little buddhas under many overhangs.

    Ended up at a grand, mountain temple and a personable monk from whom we bought incense for Rose and Alistair. 15,306/10km    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Baien-no-Sato to Yufuin

    14. november 2023, Japan ⋅ ☀️ 4 °C

    Day 8 was a fantastically clear day. We were driven to a little village, visited an old farmhouse, and home of an old lady who helps Walk Japan,
    mini-bussed on to an old temple at the foot of the hill, given our own little bento for lunch and started up on the tricky walk day. First was straight up to the ridge - about 90 mins- then carefully up and down to the three high points around the ridge. One point had metal footholds bolted on to a 3m rock-face. At least it was dry!

    We walked/crabbed our way around for an hour, had lunch on a pievce of the ridge with cliffs on either side, then came down through forests to another temple with a 1200 yo rock carving of Buddha… then a bus to the resort town we have been in for two nights.

    In hindsight, you need to imagine a small, steep, circular volcano, say 300m above the land with a diameter of say 500m at the top. Then you empty out the core so the sides are almost vertical, and shave the outsides to be almost as steep as the insides, leaving the rim between say 0.5-2m wide. Then take away two thirds of the whole thing. We walked up to and around what was left. … a bit like walking on the edge of an eggshell. The stocks had a lot of use! There were times when I was quite sure the people who decided to set up the trail were the offspring of lunatic Japanese mountain goats. Hiking up a 1600m mountain the next day was simple after that: it was just a question of going step by step for however long we needed, rather than having to check each step and handgrip.

    On the hoizon was the 1500m mountain we climb the next day. It is the double-peaked one in some photoos. We went to the RHS peak as the walk on the left has become very dangerous after a tremor.
    The town is a tourist trap: endless cake and ice-cream shops to cater for day-trippers, who are mostly Korean honeymooners. Their buses leave at 445 and the shops all close at 5pm. It is suddenly a very pretty place without them, but less ice-cream for sale. 15,880/10.6km and 99 flights    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende
    A ridge to which we walked...
    Guide and Anne. Who's leading whom?Tomorrow's mountain

    1,000 year old Buddha carvings + Yufuin

    14. november 2023, Japan ⋅ ⛅ 8 °C

    Today was a relatively short walk (a mere 10.6km) after a bit of wandering around a village. Two and a half hours over steep ridges with a few places needing chains or even metal steps on the rocks. We then had lunch in a good-sized town (rather than a hamlet, or a bento delivered to a small house or shelter somewhere) called Yufuin, which has very upmarket hotels as well. Tomorrow, Wednesday, is a long but steady walk to the top of a quite high ( by local standards) mountain.

    On the way down towards Yufuin we went past a temple with an ancient Buddha carving. Yufuin was beautiful in the evening, when the masses were on their buses and gone

    Our hotel was very traditional (but a modern building). Pets were allowed provided they wore nappies...

    15,880/10.6km and 99    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Mt Yufu-dake 1583m Part 1

    15. november 2023, Japan ⋅ ⛅ 10 °C

    Great start to the early day: instead of endless servings of fish/pickles/sashimi/rice/egg/miso for breakfast there was a self-serve breakfast at 7am that had yoghurt and cereal and lots of coffee.

    We (bar three Americans) caught a local bus from very close to the to the foot of the mountain and walked up to the peak on the right in the photo, then back down into the town. Left at 745, back at 230pm. BYO lunch and water. It was cold at the top (with the odd patch of ice) but jackets not needed after all the climbing - we were hot.Not all of us went. A bus to the foot, a slog to the top, lunch on the way down, and a stroll into the village mid-afternoon. It was freezing at the top.

    26,537, 17.5km, 179 flights of stairs    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    End of walk, Kokura

    16. november 2023, Japan ⋅ ☁️ 11 °C

    Another serve-yourself breakfast - bliss! We walked to the station with Andrew, the guide, caught a train to where we started then another on to Kokura. the first stop in Kyushu for trains from the main island. Andrew was excellent company, as were Sid and M (from Singapore).

    Our plan was to rest, do some washing, and look around... but we had found a laundromat in Yufuin, so we had plenty of time in Kokura.

    Kokura has few tourists because it has few attractions, but there was a large, impressive castle and a cat on a shrine controllled by dogs. We spent a lot of time wandering through a covered maze of tiny shops.18.080/12.7km and 9 flights    Les mer

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  • Walking RowanJapan 2023Reisende

    Hiroshima and Kyoto

    16. november 2023, Japan ⋅ 🌧 13 °C

    The joys of rail passes, and a wonderful rail system. Walked to the station, had our usual breakfast in a bakery/cafe as soon as it opened, were in the right place in the right queue for the right seats in the right carriage when the train came at the right time, and went straight to Hiroshima in tranquility. At Hiroshima we left our luggage at the locker room (full - the porters were all helping), walked around, found the school attended by the young girl who started the paper crane effort that has lasted 50+ years, then picked up our luggage from the lockers and were in Kyoto for dinner. Our hotel (Comfort Choice) was perhaps our best in Japan, but in the middle of large distances. We had dinner at a restaurant nearby (one of two - tried the other one the next day: it was a Japanese cafe with seats for maybe 12). This one was part of a chain... felt like cheating. 21,342/14.8kmLes mer

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