Roving Japan

Ibusuki / Chiran Photoset

Today was a splurge. Before we start the main hike, Risa really wanted to do the famous Kagoshima sand bath. So this morning we caught a train to the sleepy little town of Ibusuki. We arrived around 10:30am and walked straight down to the beach area where they have the sand bath.

This was quite an experience. You pay $9 and receive a yukatta. Then you go down to the locker room area and undress and put on the yukatta. Then you walk down to the beach where they have an area with giant covered sand boxes. Inside the sand boxes you see heads and umbrellas with employees either digging shallow ditches or burying people. An attendant will tell you to lay down, then they cover you with sand. I guess you are supposed to stay buried for 10min.

I was really surprised at both how hot the sand was, and how heavy! Right away you feel the heat, and you can feel your heart beating throughout your whole body. After just 5 minutes I was ready to get out. Risa, who can withstand hot baths a lot better than me was also surprised at how hot it was. But we both stuck it out for about 15 minutes before finally getting out.

We had come to the bath with the assumption that the sand was naturally hot. However we noticed as we were leaving that the way the sand is heated is by flooding the sandbox with hot onsen water, and then draining it before people get in.

Once the sand bath was over, we walked back to the main building where a traditional onsen is available. We cleaned ourselves up and soaked in the bath for a while, then it was time for lunch!

Before heading down to Ibusuki, Risa did a bit of restaurant research. We went to a place that makes katsuo-don. It was great! Awesome food, right after a relaxing onsen. Risa was in heaven.

A last minute addition to the day was to catch a bus from Ibusuki to the town of Chiran. However before we left Ibusuki there was one more treat for Risa. The bus stop where we would catch the bus to Chiran had a free foot onsen right next to it! So in the span of a couple of hours, Risa got a sand onsen, traditional onsen, awesome food, and then a foot onsen. And all of this without having to carry her heavy backpack!

Chiran:
Chiran is a small town in a central valley in southern Kyushu. The town is famous for 2 things. The seven preserved samurai houses and gardens. And the fact that Chiran is where the Kamikaze squadrons were based.

We really wanted to see the gardens and the kamikaze museum, but since we didn’t get there until 3:30, we didn’t have time to see both. We spent all the time in the Samurai gardens which was awesome, but we both are sad we missed the museum.

The gardens we saw were really great though. The entire neighborhood is preserved from the samurai era. Its also still a functioning neighborhood, with people still living in the houses tourists visit! I wonder how much it costs to buy a samurai museum house. That would be pretty cool.

I even spotted a couple elementary students walking home. Kind of funny to think that for these kids, walking home through this samurai neighborhood is perfectly normal.

From Chiran we took a bus back to Kagoshima. We are back at Little Asia for one more night before leaving early tomorrow morning on the REAL hike.

The rough plan is to follow the 10 all the way to Miyazaki, then head up the coast towards Beppu.

Now that we are well pampered, its time to head out!

Photoset Coming - Stay Tuned

We are back at the Little Asia Guesthouse. This time we got a private room, so Risa isn’t forced to sleep on the floor again.

We spent the morning combing the rocky beach near our campsite for a nice piece of coral to take with us. After finding about 5 good candidates, Risa finally settled on taking 3 pieces with us. My only requirement is that I don’t have to carry it.

Tomorrow we are going to do our final tourist thing. We are catching a train to Ibusuki so we can take a sand bath. I’m happy that we can do an Onsen that doesn’t require full nudity, as the sand bath involves being buried in sand while you wear a yukatta.

Photoset Coming - Stay Tuned

Driving in Yakushima really tested my patience. There is a main road that circles the island, but all the main tourist spots are off little side roads. You would think that these side roads would be of decent size and clearly marked… nope! They are little 1 lane roads that have almost no markings from the main road. Just a little sign right at the turn off. We probably missed every single turn off at least once. One of the waterfalls required about 4 turnarounds before we found the road.

Other than the frustrating roads, the sights around the island are awesome. The waterfalls are cool, and the scenery is really pretty. The best part, however, were the monkey’s! The western side of the island had tons of monkeys sitting on the side of the road. The little guys are really cute. I think they must come down to the road because they know people will feed them. Clever little monkey’s.

While photographing the monkeys, we had a small tragedy. The 2nd and final battery in the main camera died. Risa was devastated. Every fiber in her being wanted to photograph the 3 monkeys sitting on a rock… and she couldn’t. I think she died a little inside today.

One plan for the day was to hit up an onsen that is out in the lava flows by the ocean. The onsen is only open at low tide, since its basically a really hot tide pool. When we got there, we discovered that the onsen has no male/female dividers and no swimsuits allowed… it was also full of dudes. So we didn’t go in. Too bad, since it was a cool looking onsen.

We’re back in the campground tonight. Tomorrow we head back to Kagoshima. We will spend the night, then leave in the morning for a Kagoshima special sandbath/onsen thing. After the sandbath, we get one more night in Kagoshima, THEN we finally start our walk back to Tokyo.

Photoset Coming - Stay Tuned

Another tough night in the sleeping bags. This time it wasn’t because we were cold, it was because the space blankets have 2 problems. 1: they are REALLY good at keeping you warm, so we were actually quite hot. 2: They are very noisy. Every time we moved, I know everyone in the cabin wanted to kill us. Imagine trying to sleep while someone was crumpling a plastic grocery bag next to your head.

Around 5:30am people were up and leaving the top campground. We finally got out of there around 6:45, which was a little later than we had intended, but still gave us enough time to make it to the 2:10 bus at the trail head.

What a difference a little sun, and a downhill trail makes! The top level preservation area is really beautiful. The Joumon-sugi cedar tree is very impressive, and we got to see it with the morning sun and just a couple of other people around. With a fresh set of legs and sun shining, we finally got to really enjoy the hike. I definitely recommend tackling this trail in 2 days rather than trying to day trip it. The morning views are worth it. The only negative was when we discovered that the tripod attachment was gone. It was connected to the camera a couple days ago, so I don’t know what happened. So we basically have a useless tripod now.

Since we planned on heading out on a different trail, about an hour after hitting the railroad segment of the Joumon-sugi trail, we split off on a tangent to meet up with the main Mononoke trail.

I have to say, this little connection trail was maybe the best part of the hike. Very few people hike this part, so we were basically alone. We walked up on a couple of bucks, and saw some really cool rock formations. It really felt like we were in the forest from the movie Princess Mononoke. The connection trail lasted for a couple hours before we hit the main trail and the hundreds of tourists.

The main Mononoke trail isn’t as tough as the Jumon-sugi trail, but I still don’t understand how people were hiking with their sneakers. Their shoes were getting destroyed and it couldn’t have been comfortable.

The more we hiked among the tourists, the more my many hours of hiking with the 40lb backpack started to make me hate the people around me. Walking in tennis shoes and a fanny pack, with fresh hotel made lunches. I really began to get disgusted with them. How can you people REALLY appreciate the forest unless you punish yourselves like me?!

We made it to the bus stop at 2:00, just in time to be two of the last people on the 2:10 bus. Whew!

While walking back to camp, we passed a rental car place. A couple of people we met on the trail were talking about how renting a car for the day is the same price as taking the bus, so we decided that we would rent a car for tomorrow and drive around the island. It should be fun to visit all the main tourist spots without relying on a bus schedule. We plan to hit up a few waterfalls and maybe an Onsen.

Before returning to camp, we had to get some food. We wandered into an unassuming ramen place that was a little expensive at $10 for a bowl, but we were starving and this was the only option. Risa ordered the flying fish ramen, and I ordered the pork ramen. About 5 minutes later, we ate some of the most amazing ramen we’ve ever had. The pork literally melted in my mouth, and the flying fish cakes were really good too. The fishcakes were interesting looking since they were white, with a green center. The chef explained to us that it was his intention to make them look like little images of Yakushima island. If you are ever in Yakushima, you must eat at the first ramen place on the right after you cross the main bridge in Miyanoura. There are signs for “Kuroramen”. ITS AMAZING.

Photoset Coming - Stay Tuned

Today we trekked deep into the Yakushima forest. Land of mist, moss, deer, monkey’s, and lots and lots of tourists. Since this is Golden Week, the island is full of people trying to make the most of their week long vacation. Unfortunately for us, that means really full buses and lots of folks on the trail.

We got up at 3:45am in order to catch the 4:55am bus which would take us to the trail head. Too bad for us, the bus was full and just drove pas our stop. It reminded me a bit of San Francisco. We didn’t get on the bus until the 3rd bus arrived at 5:15.

When we finally got to the trail head, there must have been about 200 people waiting to start their hike to the top. It was raining today, so almost everyone was in their brightly colored rented rain gear. One funny aspect of Yakushima is that they forbid you from treating the forest as a bathroom. At the trail head they were selling these portable toilet things that they expected you to use and then pack out! Maybe I’m just an uncaring soul, but I think the forest can handle the extra fertilizer and I certainly wouldn’t want to pack around my business all day. Needless to say, we didn’t buy any toilets. (Or have any need to poo in the woods anyway)

The people on the day trip tours started their hike between 6am and 7am. It’s about 5 hours to the top, so they couldn’t waste any time. Since Risa and I were planning to camp at the top, we decided to eat our breakfast and wait for everyone to get well ahead of us. After about 30minutes we slowly started down the trail.

We are really happy that we waited to be alone. The beginning of the trail is really beautiful and we were stopping to take photos constantly. Our patience paid off when we spotted our first deer of the day. He was walking about 10m from the trail, eating as he went. It was pretty cool to see a wild deer after those mangy domestic deer in Miyajima.

The trail to Jumonsugi is actually an old logging railroad for the first several miles. I had originally thought that Yakushima was “untouched” but it actually had a thriving logging industry before it was all shut down in the 70’s to preserve the forest. As we walked along the trail, we actually passed by the ruins of an old school house. There was an information board explaining how at one point there were about 180 students at that school. It boggles the mind to think about what it might have been like to grow up in the middle of the mountains surrounded by this scenery.

After about 3 hours of hiking the relatively flat railroad path, we hit the REAL trail. This thing is a beast. Very steep, and slick from the rain. I seriously can’t believe people were hiking this in their tennis shoes. Maybe its the 40lb backpack I was carrying, but this trail was actually pretty strenuous if you ask me. I am glad we had our hiking poles! At the entrance to the trail we had our highlight of the day, a wild monkey was up in a tree eating leaves! It was so cool! First time I’ve ever seen a wild monkey.

Since the trail was wet, difficult, and there were a lot of people making their return trip from the top, we didn’t take many photos in the actual preservation area. Our plan is to take our time tomorrow morning as we hike back down. My pack will be a bit lighter since we did a lot of eating tonight, and hopefully it won’t be raining.

Right now we are staying in a little cabin at the top of the mountain. The cabin has two levels that fit about 5 people on each. Since we got here around 2:30, we were able to secure space on the top level.
Our top level bunk mates are really nice. We’ve been talking with a girl named Haruko from Fukuoka. They hiked the Mononoke trail this morning and they plan to hike out via the way we came in. She is super nice and we exchanged numbers so if we are ever in Fukuoka again we have a place to stay!

Time to go to bed. The temperature might dip down to 8 degrees tonight, so we brought a couple of those super thin space blankets. I’ll let you know how it goes.