It’s sooooo hard to leave!
As my friend Schulhoff notes in his blog (See links on home page, lah!), leaving Tokyo is like leaving a good friend.
I’ll take it a step further by saying leaving Tokyo is like leaving a very good friend that you used to date once.
Tokyo is expensive and sometimes exasperating. But it is full of good moments and secrets that are aching to be discovered that you tend to forget the annoying aspects. Until something like this happens…
The Keisei line is the cheapest rail option to get to and from Narita. As I blogged earlier, there’s a tokkyu (limited express) and the Skyliner that stops at Narita City before reaching the airport. Tokkyu = many stops and 15 minutes longer than the Skyliner. Skyliner = less stops.
Since they run on the same track, it’s a matter of timing on which train you should get (as I learned).
I was running late (as usual) and was a bit stressed about getting to Narita. So, when I got off the JR and was lugging the 20 kilo (yup!) red monster, I got to the ticket window and muttered “Skyliner”. I made it with about 20 minutes to spare.
So good ending to entry, right? Nope.
When I got to the platform, a tokkyu showed up within 5 minutes. Then I had another 15 minutes to wait for the Skyliner.
There’s only one track, which means that the tokkyu will get to Narita before the Skyliner will. And the 15 minutes I waited on the platform would have equaled the difference in time between the two lines.
So the moral for the story is: When you get to the Ueno/Nippori Keisei ticket office, see which train is leaving first and jump on it.
If you’re good, you’ll get a tokkyu and an extra Y1000 in your pocket for omiyage!
Back in Tokyo
Spent last night in Nagoya. A medium sized city which serves as a transit hub to historic and cool places inland that we didn’t have time to visit this trip.
Like Takeshima and Matsumoto and places like that. Bummer.
But riding back on the Shinkansen meant about an hour into the trip, we got a view of Fuji-San.
Besides building a rail line nearby, there’s all sorts of games out here too.
Ironic
It’s funny.
I’ve been in Japan, one of the most technologically advanced nations on the planet.
It’s clean and safe. Their keitai are the most advanced in the world. The food is great. Transport is safe and reliable. Manners matter.
What you can’t count on is getting online where you are staying. Follow.
I normally stay at ryokans booked through the Welcome Inn group. This is an association of small independent lodgings throughout Japan. The catch is they can’t be over Y10000 a night. There’s a LOT of great places to stay around Y4000 so you’d dun have to worry about breaking the bank.
Anyway, for most of the trip, I’ve been staying at Welcome Inns. Chances are that if I write about sleeping on the floor or if you see a tatami mat with a futon on it, that’s a Welcome Inn lodging I’m in.
However, I stayed at a Hyatt on Saturday and a JR Hotel last night. Guess what? No wireless internet at either place and the Hyatt only had broadband if you brought up a modem kit to the room.
Still, that’s better than the JR Hotel that had none!
Now both hotels allegedly cater to business types. Wonder how they connect their laptops.
Tonight, I’m at a Toyoko Inn in Nagoya. It’s a mid price business hotel. Definitely cheeper and more downmarket than the latter two. Guess what? They have wireless internet in the lobby and free wired access in the rooms. All broadband.
Soooo the lesson is: cheeper places have wi-fi and broadband for free and the more expensive places don’t?
Yup. Go figure.
Sakurajima
Went to Sakurajima today. There�s a smoking volcano there!
See? It�s smoking!
Took a ferry over to the island. It was a 15 minute ride that costs Y150. That�s Y10/minute. What a deal.
We hiked around a bit taking in nature and all that stuff.
Sakurajima is an active volcano, last erupting full scale in 1995. Full scale meaning fire, brimstone, lava and smoke. Basically the worst disaster film you�ve ever seen.
Back in the early 1900s, Sakurajima erupted and lava flow wound up in the ocean, connecting a small island. Fierce!
The best part was being able to relax in the nearby onsen. One of the pools has minerals taken from the lava rocks. It was pretty relaxing.
Note: If you�re visiting an new (to you) onsen, ask about towels BEFORE you go change and wash up. Fortunately, I dry quickly and T-shirts are absorbent.
Now we are on the Tsubame Sooper Express, bound back to Hakata. Ramen Yatai tonight! It�s basically a big area near the river full of ramen stalls. Hakata is (in)famous for eating throughout Japan.
All I had to do is mutter the words �ramen yatai� when we were at the JR ticket office and the guy at the counter let loose a silly grin.
Tsubame
Kyushu has a brand spanking new shinkansen called the Tsubame which started revenue service earlier this year. It has a lot of Kyushu touches such as wood window shades, wood seatbacks and tray tables and rope curtains. Great looking design.
Also very friendly conductors!
They are building the line in stages to replace the current Tsubame which is a tokkyu line or Limited Express. From Hakata, it�s called the Relay Tsubame, covering 150 km in about 90 minutes. Then you switch to the shinkansen about half way down the island. Then you cover 130 km in about 25 minutes. A testimony to speed, eh?
We are heading to Kagoshima , a city that has its own active volcano and on the map, looks like the southernmost city on the Japanese main islands. It�s a neat town, compact and walkable from our Ryokan which took us all of 10 minutes to get to from JR Kagoshima via tram and foot.
The owner of the establishment is also an unofficial cheerleader and tourist bureau chief all in one. He�s proud of his city and its working class roots and it�s place in modern Japanese history.
Since we got in after dark and many of Kagoshima�s sights are best appreciated in the daylight, we puttered around downtown, taking snaps and hunting down ramen shops. We found a good one and ate. They make the speciality tonkotsu broth ramen with pieces of cha siu that is tender and just falls apart when you pick it up with your hashi.
We got back around 2200 so that we could prepare for an early start touring the volcano, Sakurajima tomorrow AM. Also, since doing the wash here is free (but drying is the usual Y100 for 10 minutes), I�m doing laundry.
Late Start
It’s always a late start to the day when there�s high-speed internet in the room.
Also when you ask the hotel concerige to help with arranging lodging in the next town. Or actually the town after the next.
I left two days open (without destination or hotel reservations) in the trip so that if we wanted to be flexible in where we went, we could do so. We decided to head to Nagoya on the way back to Tokyo and I asked the hotel concierge to make some calls to find lodging.
Sold out. Sold out. Soooooold out!
He then brought us some suggestions which were out of our price range. I asked for an internet terminal so I could do a search. No dice. And no business center.
I wound up going to an internet cafe to try to locate a hotel in Nagoya.
Internet cafes here are different. Besides the fat pipe and lots of Pee Cees, there�s a fully stocked library of manga and magazines, free beverages, junk food (cup noodles and chips of all sorts), massage chairs, VIP rooms and they�re open 24/7 pretty much. People who stay out too late at the bars have been known to stay the remainder of the evening at these cafes which is why they have a more expensive rate from 0000 to 0800 on the weekends.
In either case, I had to take about an hour to locate a place to stay. Between that and our helpful concierge who tried to find us a place to stay, we lost two hours. So I call that a late start.
Won’t see this in the US
I like this. It’s a guy who is selling sake at JR Hakata Station.
The best part is that he’s giving out samples!!!
Yum!
And unlike the US, where he would either be mobbed by freeloaders or arrested for violating some archane local law, Schu and I were the only ones partaking of free sake while we were there.
And if we didn’t have to lug it around, I would have bought a bottle of “fire sake”.
Nine Tourist Traps
Beppu is known for a few things. For example:
The undue enthusiasm of the JR lady who announces the destinations of trains.
“Beppuuuuuuuuuuu! Beppuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!”
Actually, I thought it was cute, but that’s just me.
Being the onsen capital of Japan, there’s a LOT of onsen here, along with the smell of sulphur all over. The sulphur comes through along with the mineral hot spring water.
And the “Jigoku Meguri” or the “9 Hells”. It a group of hot springs for looking at because they’re so hot. Since it would be boring to cough up yen to see bubbling mud and steam at each one, each of these places have an added attraction to spice things up.
One had a sad looking zoo, another had an aquarium and another had a lot of crocodiles.
Yup, crocodiles.
Still another had a greenhouse, one had an aquarium, and one had nothing at all but a geyser.
Some had some nice gardens and waterfalls with the whole “nature” theme. And then there were some demons and dragons around too. Some of the hells were beautiful too. This is red. Nice shade of blue here. And they all had a place to soak your feet (except the geyser place) and useful advice.
Shockingly, I don’t have a whole lot to say about it all, except it took 6 hours to tour it all. It’s neat to see, but you only have to do it once.
If your friends want to check this out and you’ve already experienced hell, send them along on the tour while you chill at the onsen.
Beppu
Beppu is, according to Lonely Planet, a (hot spring) tourist mecca that rivals Las Vegas in tackiness. The secret, according to them, is to enjoy and appreciate the tackiness.
Okay…
Arrived at JR Beppu Station around 1900 this evening. After searching for about 15 minutes with a woefully inadequate map, we located the Minshuku Kokage just off the main drag that leads to the station. Here’s the sign that shows you where it is.
It�s a small family run place that has curfew (00:00) and has a hot spring in the back (well, it�s actually more of a warm spring, but more on that later).
The room is big and I have a bathroom with a very cramped western style toilet that looks like it was grafted onto a Japanese squat toilet. Verrry cramped!
And now, enough potty talk! Heh heh.
Dinner time drew near which means that it�s time to stroll around looking around for food. After browsing through several used CD/DVD shops (not my idea), we went to the end of the street where you can see the Beppu Tower.
I read somewhere that each major city has an observation tower of some sort. Maybe it�s a law…
Anyhoo, it was my idea to walk back via a parallel street. And boy, was that some street! Strip clubs! Hostess clubs! Bars! Ramen shops. And a really neat restaurant that made various forms of donburi. And apparently old too.
Here�s the menu. And a very happy customer!
Good stuff, that katsu don.
Afterwards, we went back to JR Beppu Station to shop at the Daiei (owned by Wal-Mart, I think) for tomorrow�s snacks. I got yoghurt and coffee for tomorrow AM and pudding and drinks for this evening.
Then I tried out the hot spring in the Minshuku. It was relaxing and all, but more of a warm spring. Not hot enough! The hot onsens are for tomorrow.
Train Geek
Rode the Sanyo Shinkansen past Shin-Kobe this afternoon to Kokura and transferred to the Limited Express “Sonic” for the 65 minute ride to Beppu.
Passing Shin-Kobe marked the furthest south I’d ever been in Japan. Wah.
The Shinkansen was marvelously fast, at one point the announcement sign blinked to notify the passengers that we were traveling at 285 KM/hour. That’s hella fast, even if you translate that into MPH.
Transferring to the Sonic was an example of how they do things differently in Kyushu, compared to the rest of Japan.
For one, the floor of the train was wood. The seats were leather. The train had a hood ornament (!) And we were stuck in the back of the smoking car…!
Koff koff.
To JR Kyushu�s credit, the ventilation system was very efficient. I lit up a small cigar, blew some smoke rings and voila! Smoke be gone.
Despite that, Schu and I wound up sneaking up to the non-smoking non-reserved seat car. We explained to the Conductor via stilted Japanese and pantomime why we were up there instead of our assigned seats in the back of the smoking car.
He nodded and stamped our tickets again.
Inbetween each car is a small area where people can stand around and socialize or in the case of car #3, watch sattelite TV while socializing and waiting for the bathroom.
For a limited express, it went pretty quick. So quick, the train rocked back and forth like a boat that’s anchored out on the ocean. I was feeling a bit seasick for a while.
It was nice to stand on the platform for a minute after we had arrived at Beppu to take in the fresh, rotten-egg (cuz of the sulfur that’s part of the hot springs) smelling air.