Oh, almost forgot. The stewardess on our flight to Osaka asked me after our little talk whether I lived in Osaka or Tokyo.
At first I thought I had misunderstood her question, and I must have looked at her rather silly.
When she repeated the question, I told her I live in Holland, and asked her why.
Apparently, my pronounciation is good enough to fool her into thinking I've been living in Japan for years.
Go figure. :)
Cheers, K.
As said, today we headed for Kagoshima for a well-deserved dip in Furusato Onsen on Sakurajima, an active volcano in Kagoshima Bay. Freek woke me up around 4:45, and after a quick shower, we headed for the subway.
Hopped on the Hikari Railstar at 5:56, which started rolling at precisely 6:00, just as they intended it to do. Don't you just love Japanese punctuality. ;)
As standard procedure with these kind of trips, we just slept most of the time during the trip.
Arriving in Kagoshima, the weather looked grim and a torrent of rain came down on the city, which was fortunately rapidly transformed to a soft spray. Surprisingly, the temperature was a nice 18°C, so wearing a coat plus the relative humidity on the streets made for an interesting degree of humidity at various spots of my t-shirt. ;)
The rain also nullified every chance of a decent picture, so no pictures of today's trip. Tomorrow perhaps.
Right. First things first; getting myself a room, so that I don't have to hurry and take the 17:52 Shinkansen back to Osaka. The Toyoko Inn-hotel where my friends were staying had an additional single room available, so that's taken care of.
We left the majority of our luggage at the hotel and headed for Kagoshima Bay.
To keep it short; it was heavenly. Furusato Onsen has the right temperature for me and runs a shuttle bus, so all I have to do is hop on the ferry (¥150 one-way trip), wait at the other end for the shuttle bus to take me to Furusato (for free) and have a soak in their outside bath (¥1050 for as long as you like on the same day).
The shuttle also takes you back to the harbour, so no worries there as well.
Due to the fact that the weather changed to very nice in the afternoon, I have been walking around in my (clean) t-shirt for the remainder of the day, save for a few blustery spots. To top it off, we got ourselves some ice cream. :D
Let me tell you; it feels kind of weird walking around in just a shirt and jeans, munching on an ice cream cone at the end of bloody December.
We had dinner in a small restaurant in a shopping mall; a Doria (Italian/Japanese dish) set with a drink, salad and some soup for ¥788. (about €5)
Anyone who still wants to claim that Japan is an expensive country to be in will be declared crazy by your's truly. ;)
We returned to the hotel to put our luggage into our rooms and after a quick visit to one of the local Book Off-shops (more on those later), I headed back to the hotel once again to write this and turn in for the night.
The program for tomorrow will be rising early, get a bullet train out of here, make a brief stop in Hakata for lunch and return at the apartment in time for the concert I'll be attending tomorrow.
Cheers, K.