Well....we arrived in Kagoshima and it was beautiful sunshine, but we thought we`d take a `breather` and stay in our hotel catching up on the blog and just chilling out (it was the 13km walk down the mountain that killed us...)......BAD IDEA!!
Since then all its done is rain, rain, rain....we`ve been here five days and today is the first day it hasn`t rained nonstop!! Oh well - although deterred for a couple of days (although we did go and see Shrek Three - loved it!!), we decided to face it, don our brollies and head out!!
Our first expedition was a night on the town! The girls in the hotel were so cute and found out a `good` place to go, we got a little map printed out and the name of the manager and everything!! hehe!! Two bottles of wine in our room (opened, after some failed attempts to use a toenail clipper, with a corkscrew from the hotel next door!), a bowl of pasta and beer (not in the same bowl), and onto the club.....we were expecting some massive dance rave with loads of Japanese people dancing like crazy fools to terrible music, unfortunately that`s not quite what we got. We ended up with a very quiet little bar (albeit `all you can drink`), run by a Philipino guy and had a French Barman!! We drank all we could...which wasn`t as much as it should have as we are both wussy nowadays...and ended up back at the hotel!! They just don`t seem to have `clubs` - not that we could find in this `up/down` nation anyways!! A sad state of affairs, although quite funny!!
We visited Sakurajima Island yesterday - where there is an active volcano and lava everywhere (though not, as it turns out, still running!). The volcano`s last `explosion` was in 1914, when it wiped out an entire village and turned the island into a peninsular - however, it does still errupt frequently and apparently they have `ash storms`, where it rains ash! haha!! We haven`t experienced it though....yet! Unfortunately, due to adverse weather conditions, we didn`t really get to see the volcano itself, just the base and a whole lot of cloud! Very depressing, especially as you KNEW there were amazing views to be had!
Today (sunshine...wohoo!!) we headed to Chiran, which they call a Samurai Village, although its only really one road! The houses were absolutely beautiful, so peaceful (apart from a rampage of Japanese tourists with their cameras) and all overlooked by the hills and tea planatations in the area! Chiran was also the training centre for the Kamikaze Pilots during WWII and the Peace Museum there was very interesting...although I couldn`t quite get my head around the whole idea of it to be honest. A really lovely old Japanese guy caught us on our way out and gave us his essay on the subject, in Engrrrrish, they`re really nice like that!
After Chiran we headed further south - although we missed the bus, not bothering to check that the last one was at 1430, we showed up at 1515 and had to hitch-hike down to Ibusuki! Our `ride` was really cool too - showed us Lake Ikeda (and some really gross eels) en route and apparently won 8,000,000 yen on the Pachinko/slot machines yesterday?!? He was a farming teacher....loved his veg!
The Sand Baths were what we had headed to Ibusuki for - the sand is literally so hot (because of the volcanic rock etc underneath), its supposed to be relaxing and good for you! After changing into our robes, we wandered down to the beach and were covered in this hot sand (we even had brollies over our heads) by sweet old ladies!! It was quite relaxing for about 5 minutes, but I (Dan) got bored really quickly and just wanted to leave...James says he could have fallen asleep though! A very odd tradition, but really nice at the same time! Followed by a Japanese Spa...and all for gbp4 each (about the only thing that wasn`t too expensive in the whole of Japan I think....that and Ice-cream!!).
So, that`s the Satsuma Peninsula and Kyushu over and done with....we head to the Hot Spring resort of Beppu tomorrow on a very slow and expensive bus!!
