Blogs from Kumamoto, Kumamoto, Japan, Asia

Nach dem üblichen Frühstück bin ich heute zur zweiten Sehenswürdigkeit von Kumamoto gefahren: der Burg. Diese wurde 2016 durch ein Erdbeben beschädigt, ist aber mittlerweile fast vollständig wieder aufgebaut worden. Ich sah heute aber immer noch zwei Kräne. Man kann im Gebäude bis zur Aussichtsplattform auf der 6. Etage hochlaufen und es befindet sich auch eine Ausstellung darin. Nach meinem Besuch kehrte ich ins Hotel und genehmigte mir mal wieder ein japanisches Premiumbier aus dem Hotel-Laden. Den Nachmittag über machte ich so dies und das und abends hatte ich eine Reservierung im japanischen Restaurant meiner Unterkunft. Hier waren die Englischkenntnisse der Bedienung sogar für japanische Verhältnisse nicht besonders und ich weiß nur, dass ich "expensive meat" gegessen habe. Aber was interessant war, war dass es auf einer Art Tischgrill mit einem heißen Stein erst von mir ... read more

Driving around in Japan is reasonably easy as they do at least drive on the same side as us!! Trying to get the sat Nav to work was more of a problem especially when we couldn't get Google maps to work. ... eventually driver and navigator worked in harmony.... Anyway it's given us a few days of doing our own thing and taking a few days to get to Kumamoto our next match with Wales v Uruguay. There was a lot of talk while we were in Oita about the typhoon that they thought was going to hit the island of Kyushu and that Wednesday's game might be cancelled, but luckily for us it missed us all together but it did cause some horrendous damage further North. We arrived in Kumamoto and gave the car back ... read more

Day 5 Dist. 63 miles. Avenue 14 mph Ascent 637m On reflection last nights meal was octopus tentacles and not the pork I had ordered. Oscar got my pork, but could not find any meat in it. The tentacles in my meal were ok once you had got the suction pads off the roof of the mouth, but I suspect the nutritional value was akin to Desperate Dan’s tripe and cow heal pie. The breakfast today was very good in the Dormy Hotel with a buffet with too much choice and the plates were filled sky high. We claimed we were carbo loading for the ride ahead. Whilst it rained quite heavily overnight at 8am it had ceased and was forecast to rain heavily again this afternoon. So of we went at 8 in overcast conditions ... read more

Back home, the ubiquitous ramen food product conjures up images of either ultra extreme food budgeting or camping fare. Not so in Japan where ramen has been taken to an art form. The last time I willingly ate anything remotely resembling ramen noodles was when I was on Aconcagua in December of 2011. I'm pretty sure that back then 10 packs of noodles did not cost much more than $1 in the USA so imagine my shock and chagrin when my first meal in Japan last week was ramen noodles for ¥800; side dishes of a bowl of rice and 5 fried gyoza (Japanese dumplings) went for a much more reasonable ¥200. The ramen was good, but $8 good? Not so sure... US$ ≈ 101 Japanese yen (¥) Kumamoto Spent 2 nights here to recover from ... read more

10 June – Kumamoto-Kagoshima Although shamefully in Hakata I really only saw the station building and my hotel, had decided to thrash the rail pass on Monday 10th and go down to the S of Kyushu as had previously seen Beppu, the hot springs capital on the East coast. So just went to the station and got the next shinkansen to Kumamoto (confusing my Japanese syllables, as you do, first asked for Matsumoto, in Central Honshu and wondered why the routing was via Shin Osaka!). Anyway the Kyushu shinkansen, a 700 series, was just as efficient as all the others and took only 45 mins. Once there some ood English help form the info centre and got myself an all day tram ticket for 500Y as I knew I would take 3 @ 150 – better ... read more