Actually, I’m feeling better about the hotel now. It’s kind of run down and in the middle of nowhere but really I need to do more research before I show up places. It makes for more adventure, sometimes more than I need. This hotel is an old school onsen resort, one that’s kind of on its way down, but it’s fine and it wasn’t expensive. If you get the right train it’s less than an hour and a half from Kagoshima-chuo station and most of the staff were a crack-up. I got lost several times and they all said something like, “This place isn’t really that convenient.” That’s not something I’d expect to hear from Japanese people. I guess that’s why I like Kagoshima so much.

And the food was great. I’m not sure if this breakfast was better or if the APA Hotel breakfast was better, but like the guy on the trolley today told me, “The food in Kagoshima is great.”

Jet lag has really hit. After an awful night of waking up over and over, I finally was dead asleep when the alarm went off. I dragged myself up and I was going to hit the onsen in the morning but I checked my email, like a dummy, and I missed my chance. But I ate too much again which was a good thing later on because finding lunch turned out to be an ordeal.

I got on the train back to Kagoshima-chuo and I was surprised at how quickly we got to the city and how crowded the train got.

Kagoshima-chuo station was packed (it is a national holiday today) and the tourist information bureau had a sign that said, “Expect the tour buses to be sold out because a cruise ship arrived today.” I talked to several couples from the ship because, as my sister says, I’m one of those old guys who talks to everyone. There are also lots of foreigners in Kagoshima who look like they live here and I want to join them. It is a lot warmer than I like but I can deal with that. I bet it would be much easier than slipping on ice.

In any case, I was confused by the lack of streetcars and I was told that today is the biggest festival in Kagoshima. Several main roads were closed. I took a taxi rather than trying to figure out which re-routed bus would get me closest to the hotel. I left my bag and this is what it looked like outside the front door of the hotel:

It’s a wide street and the grass-covered median is actually the trolley tracks between the two lanes. The dancers went down one side and up the other. The crowds got much worse after I crossed the street. They’d stop the dancing every few songs to let people cross.

At some point I talked to a local Brit and he said there was a Tokyo Disneyland parade coming which was the big attraction. I got as close as I could and waited in the heat.

There were a bunch of gradeschool marching bands playing quite well along with a couple of other marching bands and we waited. And then I saw it, Mickey and Minnie on the first bus, Donald and Daisy on the second. You can’t see them but Goofy and Pluto were on the back of the first bus and Chip & Dale were on the back of the second.

At this point I realized how little I cared about Mickey and let a mom stand in the great spot I found. I still got to see everything. Everyone else seemed to be taking a video and were much more excited about this than I was.

And then I wandered through the crowds to try to find some lunch. The lines were horrible and all the streets away from the festival were packed.

I saw multiple ambulances called and I wonder if it wasn’t because of a section of the festival called “Shochu Street.” An older gentleman excitedly told me it was the first time they’ve held it in 4 years. Later when I was talking to a cruise couple from LA when we saw an older gentleman do a faceplant directly into a building. He finally got up and was being belligerent with his wife. They refused help from passers-by.

About 1:30 pm I headed back towards the hotel and got a greasy bag containing yakitori and grilled pork sticks. It was great and I can say I had the festival experience without standing in line. It was at the edge of the festivities and the crowds there had died down.

One of the most popular things today looked like a whole potato spiral cut, stuck onto a 2-foot stick, and I think fried. I didn’t get a picture, but the lines were long for those wherever they were located.

After that I checked into my hotel and sat inside for about an hour before I headed out for coffee. This shop was on the “People of Kagoshima” YouTube channel and the owner won a prize for being one of the best baristas in the world. He wasn’t there, but the coffee was very good.

Then I wandered around. Come to think of it, this is when I saw the drunk guy faceplant into the building. I also saw a “Furuits Parlour”.

The rest of the day didn’t get many pictures. I went to several different Daiso stores (¥100 shops) and bought some dumb things I was excited to get like a jar opener (¥100!) and a short two-prong power cord (OMG, ¥300). They didn’t take Suica but they did take my AMEX on my iPhone.

The third Daiso was back at Kagoshima-chuo station, about a mile away. On the way I went by the only gasoline station I’ve been to in Kagoshima where I refueled a rental car in 2019. The cab drove me by it earlier so I figured I was destined to take a picture of it.

On the way back to the hotel I got on the streetcar and asked a guy what the next station was (the announcement was severely muffled) and he got two other people involved. Everyone is so helpful down here. He’s from Kagoshima, but lives in Osaka right now, He’s the guy who said the food down here is great and I agree! And the size of the portions is big even by US standards. I had a hard time finishing my dinner of tonkatsu.

And I thought I’d get another early night but yeesh, I had a heck of a time trying to use the smartEX app to buy a bullet train ticket. I hope it worked. We’ll see tomorrow morning.

 

I stayed at an APA Hotel in Kirishima Kokubu near the airport and there isn’t much around there. Like most APA Hoels, it looked like it needed some repairs/updating, but it was fine. I got breakfast in the hotel because a lot of times I travel to places I’m unfamiliar with and I’m not sure I can get a small breakfast set (like coffee and pizza toast) like I usually get in Osaka or Tokyo or other large towns. I can usually find a combini and make do with the food there but if I’m unlucky that’s all there is to eat in the area.

Back to breakfast, it was a Japanese breakfast buffet and aside from the coffee, it was excellent. Even the natto was great and instead of Japanese mustard, it had a seaweed mix in.

I was still a little hungry after that but I figured I’d have lunch and extra snacks. Oh boy was I wrong.

Kirishima doesn’t look that small but there isn’t a whole lot going on. The best part was probably breakfast but it’s a tie with how friendly the older people were. There was an old lady on the train with me who told me that there’s fewer than one train per hour and it takes forever to get to Kagoshima (the main town). The train stops for 15 minutes at various stations to let other trains make connections. It took a couple of hours to get to Kagoshima, and then another couple of hours to get to Ibusuki where I was headed for the day.

Oh boy was that second train a pain. There’s even less going on down that direction and there’s only one track. I started the trip with my IC card payment (my Suica card) and there was an announcement about how I’d have to talk to the train operator if I went further than three stops. I was going to the end of the line. When I got to the end of the line, the guy said I was supposed to end my trip at Kagoshima and then buy a paper ticket for the rest of the trip. Also, my Suica card is what I usually use to pay for almost everything and it’s locked in the middle of a trip.

When I got off the train, I was in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, there was a bathroom at the station and when I got out there was only a sign with the number of several taxi services. The other guy waiting told me he called for a cab but I should take it and he’d call his dad for a ride. I took the cab to the hotel and it was only about 1PM and the check-in time was 4PM. I left my bag in their care and went to find the main attraction of the area, hot sands where they bury you in a layer of sand as you lay there.

My mom and aunt went a while ago and my sister said it sounded fun. It definitely is fun, but less than an hour. There was 20 minutes of waiting while they slowly checked people in. I got my yukata and towel for about ¥1500 and they told me to put my stuff in a locker and just wear nothing but the yukata and bring the small towel. Then you take a long walk down the promenade to the beach, and there’s an area they have tented where people get buried in the sand, but it says to get out after 10 minutes or you might get cooked. Then you go back, strip off your yukata, wash off the sand that you can, and then head to an onsen bath where I had to wash myself repeatedly to get all the sand off. That took another ten minutes. The whole thing took less than an hour, but it was fun.

There were a LOT of foreigners there from France, China, Korea, Australia, and even Poland. A lot of that I got from listening to them speaking, but the Polish guy was nice. What I realized is that there are LOTS of instructions and 90% of them are in Japanese. I had to tell the Polish guy some of the stuff, and there was a Chinese guy who didn’t know which door to go to next.

After that, there’s absolutely NOTHING to do. At about 2PM I started walking towards the only other attraction in the area, a reproduction of an ancient town I think, but after seeing ZERO Cocacola vending machines I headed back towards the hotel. I found ONE convenience store, a Lawson, and I had their chicken with tartar sauce inside. I would’ve taken more pictures, but I stood outside and inhaled them. It was all I had for lunch.

And then it was off to the hotel. I figured if nothing else I’d sit in the waiting area and catch up on all the junk email I get. On the way, however, I found another reason not to move to this area:

I made the image smaller because it’s horrid enough at this size.

Walking up to the hotel, I noticed a lot of flaws in the exterior and some inside as well. The rooms are OK. It just seems a bit old and need of renovation. Check out the elevator doors on the fifth floor:

But what I was waiting on was dinner and that was great. I suppose the only thing not great was the loud party of elderly people across the room, but what are you going to do about that?

I felt like i needed something other than water to drink so I had a non-alcoholic beer. I felt a little buzzed but I think it was the jet lag kicking in. BTW, the raw meat in the box on the lower left is raw pork for shabu-shabu in the sterno-fired, metal lidded dish above it.

I didn’t even go to the onsen here because i already went to another one earlier today. And the hotel even has a sand bath in-house. I guess the trick here is to not show up until 4pm and then do all of the sand bathing and regular bathing at the hotel.

Well, I made it. I told myself I wasn’t going to bed at 8pm and it’s 9:10pm now. Time to call it a day.

Sorry for the late start. It’s been a bit hectic. My first travel day took me 24+ hours to get to my hotel and, as you’d expect, I wasn’t 100% towards the end of that. Up at 4AM, on the shuttle at 4:30AM, on the first plane from PDX to SEA at 7AM, 4H layover plus lots of walking to other terminals, 11H flight to HND, 3+H layover, and then the final flight from HND to KOJ (basically a few hours from Kagoshima).

The longest flight wasn’t that bad. New plane but it had a bunch of glitches. We were delayed because the satellite uplink for the WiFi wasn’t working and I don’t think it ever really worked. The movies paused from time to time. My air blower didn’t work. A whole column of seats (not the rows) had their entertainment systems lock up. But for the most part it was fine. I got to watch several foolish movies: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Fast X, F9, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, and since I didn’t have time for a full fifth movie, part of Central Intelligence (again). 

I was glad to get to Haneda, but there were extra settings on my phone that were necessary to get the internet working and the WiFi there is always janky. That meant the travel forms which were supposed to be completed online to get a QR code didn’t really work at first and I had to fill out one of them on paper. They’re no longer giving the airlines the paper forms because they’re supposed to be a backup, but you know how that all works.

Being AZN, we have to take gifts when going back to the home country. That usually meant having a whole extra suitcase full of gifts we had to cart around. We finally realized we could just mail them from the airport and this time I arrived at a time the post office was open! Unfortunately, Haneda’s three terminals are widely separated buildings with shuttle buses, and I got to tour all of them. My flight arrived at Terminal 3, the post office is in Terminal 1, and my ANA domestic flight was in Terminal 2. It was much easier than last year.

My first actual hiccup was when I couldn’t find the key to the lock on the bag with the presents. Fortunately it was locked through some strings and I just cut the strings. Then I couldn’t find my “Japanese wallet” with all my Japanese money. Fortunately, I had a Suica app with money on it so I used that. (I should mention I’m carrying two phones because I need be logged into two Apple accounts since I had ¥7700 on an old account and that meant I had to have a spare iPhone just to spend it.) I have ways of getting around problems like this and later the next day I found the key and the wallet in a pocket in my bag that’s really hard to see.

Anyway, onto the food. It was about 1:30AM Portland time when I was looking for dinner (4:30PM Japan time) and I wasn’t really feeling like anything heavy. All the flying was making my stomach feel a bit weird too. I found a nice cafe with a view of the runways that had Japanese coffee house fare including Napolitan spaghetti. I can’t tell you how happy spaghetti with a ketchup based sauce made me, but it’s something I like having on every trip.

I got to Kagoshima airport and it was larger than I expected. Booking.com told me that the prepaid cost of a taxi was ¥35,0000 (about $2,000) so I think they have their closest airport marked as Fukuoka or something. When I called the hotel, they told me to pre-book a ride and gave me some numbers but when I called they told me just to get in a cab at the airport.

And that’s about it for the first day.