Kagoshima

Kagoshima is a fifty minute bullet train ride from Kumamoto. Our day there was the most pleasant of the trip for one simple reason – mr and mrs bogan weren’t with us. We also visited some gorgeous gardens and saw some interesting things, but not having that man’s voice and their pushy behaviour around was just amazingly relaxing.

I can’t give you a link for the place we went to first, to see traditional silk dyeing and weaving, because ‘Amamino Sato’ does not bring up anything that I recognise. But that’s what our travel book said it was (and these people clearly went to the same place by the same name.) Anyway, lovely gardens, and fascinating processes – the mud in the region is used to provide the black colour for the silk. The weavers can make about 10cm of silk material a day. Making a complex kimono can take a year.

Lunch was at the Sun Royal hotel, overlooking the Sakurajima volcano. The view was a bit clouded, as you can see, but the food was amazing, and watching the hydrofoils plying back and forth was also fun.

After lunch we went to the Senganen Garden, incorporating the Shokoshuseikan museum. If you know anything about Satsuma ware, well, this is the place it started from. The gardens also contain a cat shrine (no actual cats, dead or alive, on display)

Sadly, you aren’t allowed to photograph inside the museum, so examples of the fine glassware had to be pictured from inside the very pricey shops Another view of me with my purple sweet potato icecream. My shirt was the same colour as the official employee/guide sweatshirts 🙂 A window at Kagoshima station

And that was it for Japan except for a very tedious last day driving back to Fukuoka, flying to Narita and then to Brisbane, where we again had to wait for our connection (only five hours this time) thanks to overnight storms. The ‘charming’ Qantas check in person was all of a piece with the shitty service we’d had in Sydney on the way out, so it was a hell of a shock to the system after two weeks of bowing, politeness, good humour and stunning customer service. Australia needs to lift its game.

And I want to go back to Japan now.

In a day or so I will post a picture of some of the lovely porcelain we bought. But what is the most important, most beautiful part of our trip is the memories of the Japanese people themselves. It’s a totally different society, totally different attitudes. Some of which, we could do well to emulate.