Our hotel in Kumamoto was the worst of the entire trip, both in room size and facilities, and for breakfast (fortunately the BenKay restaurant where we had our farewell meal was a much higher standard.) Was not pleased. However, it was across the road from one of the bloody enormous Tsuruya department stores (with the biggest food hall I have ever seen in my life), and in the middle of the shopping district, so there was that aspect we hadn’t had a chance to explore in any of our other stops. It isn’t a particularly scenic city, or at least we didn’t see that side of it, but I did do some booze shopping, and on two nights, Doug and I went exploring for food, finding a wonderful tempura place the first night, and a ramen place the second. (Doug has become quite the ramen fan :). ) So we ate good local real food while the rest of the group went off to posher places and came back bitching about too much to eat. Again.
Bullet train, duh, when we went to Kagoshima
View of Kumamoto Castle from the breakfast room window
One of a series of lovely statues over a bridge in the city
View from our bedroom window – no idea what it is
The first day in Kumamoto was actually a full day in Kagoshima, which I’ll cover in the next post. In the morning of our second day, Doug and the others went off to Suizenji Park (which Doug said was one of the best gardens on the trip)
and Kumamoto castle which included a museum on the history of the place
I went looking for Japanese whisky and shochu in the department store and had a great time chatting to people, before meeting our group for lunch at our hotel. After lunch we went to Mount Aso, which we both consider one of the highlights of the trip. Mt Aso is actually the caldera of a supervolcano. We drove into the caldera’s interior, a very rich farming area, and beautiful with it. Our destination was supposed to be the crater in the centre, but it’s been closed for a year or so because of volcanic activity. (This link will show you what we missed.)
Never mind, the Aso Volcano Museum offered nice views and a fairly amazing amount of information boards, dioramas, and movies about the area. We were also fortunate enough to have a short talk from a young, very enthusiastic volcanologist working in the museum.
Yup, it was active! View from the Aso Volcano Museum carpark
Former active volcano, Komezuka
Some of the lush scenery from the road
Columnar basalt in a streams valley
