Kyushu Part 3 – Gardens, shopping malls and REALLY bad clubs

For our final day in Nagasaki we made a point of visiting the Glover Garden, a kind of garden-cum-museum in honour of one William Glover, a major figure in contemporary Japanese history and Scotsman that I'd never heard of. Turns out he opened the first lager brewery in Japan (now Kirin) and imported the first steam locomotive, while his son revolutionized the fishing industry by making use of modern trawlers and catching techniques for the first time. Not bad going, considering beer, trains and fish are still major cornerstones of Japanese industry.

Before seeking out lunch in Nagasaki's Chinatown after this, however, we both made the rather unpleasant discovery that the limited bank ATM system in Japan is in fact so limited that it's impossible to take out any money in Japan AT ALL while Golden Week is in progress – while not a complete disaster, seeing as we'd both brought quite a lot of cash along, it did mean us having to be a little restrained with our spending once we got to Fukuoka the following day.

Which is a shame really, because if there's one thing you can do an awful lot of in Fukuoka it's shop. My abiding memory of the place was of a sprawling urban jungle, populated with large numbers of impossibly attractive young couples, making their way from one ludicrously oversized shopping centre to the next. That probably makes it sound a bit worse than it actually was though, it is a nice place, the central bit we were in being much like the commercial districts of Osaka, only cleaner and much less confusing.

As luck would have it, we also happened to hit Fukuoka in the midst of a large annual festival, during which huge numbers hit the streets to watch processions, mini taiko concerts, eat at temporary riverside noodle bars and partake in all the other activities one usually associates with a matsuri. The big carnival procession was a somewhat bewildering highlight, featuring as it did massed ranks of marchers dragging floats, waving flags, dancing and generally larking about, though the jarring juxtapositions of traditional Japanese music, brass bands and pre teens high-kicking to blaring rave music while kitted out in somewhat risque clothing was a bit much for the senses.

The malls on offer in Fukuoka really are stupid though, putting anything I've seen in UK to shame. Thurrock Lakeside is a minnow compared to the cavernous, labyrinthine chaos of Canal City, or the insane IMS tower with its enormous open-plan car showroom on the seventh floor. It would seem that this is where Japanese commercial architects come to let their imaginations run riot, designing these bloated monuments to capitalism. And can you easily find a record store in any of them? Can you hell...

With Nagasaki's nightlife having turned out to be considerably quieter than either of us had expected, we were hoping to be able to make up for that in Fukuoka – after all, it's a bustling, modern, young, rich city and allegedly home to the most attractive young ladies in Japan, the famous hakata bijin – what was there not (for me) to like? As it turned out, after a nomihodai (all you can drink) session completed in just under an hour and a considerable amount of time spent wandering around lost while asking various young passers-by about any good places to go, we somehow managed to end up in one those multi-storey buildings so beloved of Japanese entertainment districts with different bars and clubs on different floors. The first one we tried was a lifeless hip hop club, with a hidden DJ spinning the very latest in lazy, boring, unimaginative gangster stuff to a handful of extremely unimpressed punters. Seeking our chances elsewhere, we tried a reggae club one floor down where a DJ (visible at least) was spinning the very latest in lazy, boring, unimaginative dancehall/reggeton stuffto a handful of extremely unimpressed punters. Having paid a fiver to get into both, we were at least able to wander freely between them with the 'back of the hand stamp' system they were operating.

The reggae place got even worse once the DJ actually stopped playing proper records and instead fired up a series of crap instrumental breaks over which a group of suit-wearing salarymen started toasting in a singularly inept way. It was funny for about five minutes, before this impromptu karaoke session became unwatchably bad. Still, you can't win 'em all, eh? We both did manage to get well and truly battered however, which was at least something.

Possibly the bit of Fukuoka I enjoyed the most, however, was unexpectedly the museum of contemporary Asian art we went to the following day – there was loads of good stuff here, from Vietnamese takes on the style of Rembrandt, to none-more-postmodern satirical collages from India and video art from Pakistan. I never think to go to art museums that often, but maybe I should.

So, with that done there was nothing left but to get the nightbus home – an experience I found very odd just prior to lights out when we made the final stop for the rest of the journey. All motorway rest stations throughout the world feel as though they exist in some kind of weird limbo, but it's even more the case in Japan, where you're surrounded on all sides by elevated freeways and the indistinct glittering lights of a thousand factories and power plants pressing in on you.

Kyushu then, it's, y'know...nice. We were only there for a week and only went to perhaps the top three tourist destinations, so most likely saw just a fraction of what the place had to offer. On the whole, Kyushu definitely feels far more 'Japanese' than either Hokkaido or Okinawa, but then that's to be expected I suppose. Either way, my aim of setting foot on all five of Japan's major landmass areas draws one stage closer, only Shikoku to do now and I'll have me a set...

Anyone wishing to see more Kyushu pix can do so here.

Kyushu Part 2 – Mud, Bombs and Mountains

Onsen Hoyoland, now that was fun, if a little stinky. Right after we'd investigated the hells, we both decided something a little more worthwhile was perhaps in order, thus it was that we made our way further up and into the hills for a naked frolic in Beppu's geothermal mud. Upon getting off the bus we were greeted by a large hotel building that one could supposedly stay at if one wished, but given the almost comical state of disrepair and neglect on display in the entrance lobby (peeling paint, 70s furnishings, gloomy lighting), one probably wouldn't want to.

Anyhow, the hotel wasn't what we'd come to see, but rather the complex awaiting us at the end of lengthy stroll down a wooden walkway, ending in the entrance to the male/female changing rooms. On the other side of these was a number of outdoor and indoor onsens linked by pathways and bridges, all of filled with almost completely white sulphurous water. Once in, surrounding the rocks at the bottom was a kind of gluey, gelatinous mud that sucked at your feet, the aim being to rub it liberally over yourself before washing it all off. Once again, very good for the skin apparently, but left me and my clothes stinking of eggs for days.

Pretty much satisfied with what Beppu had had to offer, it was off on a bus again to Nagasaki. Famous, of course, for being the second city in history to have been hit by an atomic bomb at the end of WWII, it's still well known for being a major shipping port, as well as one of Japan's most cosmopolitan cities.

The A-Bomb memorials and museum were much as you'd expect, similar to Hiroshima but on a slightly smaller scale, though the museum really is good – particularly the very even-handed history exhibits that detailed the background behind Japan's Pacific War. As I felt when I saw Hiroshima, again it's remarkable to see Nagasaki as it is now, a bustling, important, major city when only 60 years ago so much of it was reduced to dust.

The following day saw me and Gemma tackling the mountains of Unzen in order to get a good look at a still active volcano. After a somewhat misty start (resulting in a completely blind cablecar journey halfway up), it soon brightened up just in time for us to reach the summit after a pretty intense (for me at least) 1hr+ climb. The views were grand though, just like floating in the clouds. Coming down we went on foot all the way – not incredibly arduous but not easy, and the experience did leave with howling calves and painful sunburn for most of the next few days.

A quick word about dinner – once back at the hotel, I ended up spending five minutes chatting in foyer with a Mr Kawabata, a trucker from Fukuoka, who seemed so grateful for our chat that he promptly invited me and Gemma to for dinner with him at 'the best Japanese restaurant' in Nagasaki – a dubious claim, to be sure, perhaps he just found it to be the most tolerant. In any event, it was busy, cramped, and freezing cold, owing to the operators being a little too enthusiastic with their air conditioning. Kawabata promptly ordered plates of incredibly random stuff, most of which Gemma and I had never seen before, and some of which we hopefully never will again. Among the sundry delights were some unspeakably inedible green snails that I refused to go anywhere near, and a platter of whale meat that included tongue, bacon, blubber and whatever the whale equivalent of 'breast' might be. The whale was the tastiest thing on offer and before anyone says anything, well, you have to at least try it once, don't you? Especially if someone else insists on paying, as was inevitably the case here, despite our protests. All we had to do in return was patiently listen to Kawabata's barrage of incomprehensible Japanese and smile politely. We made our excuses for the night the moment we got outside.

Kyushu Part 1 – Fire and Water

So, to Kyushu then. With Japan’s run of consecutive public holidays in the first week of May (otherwise known as Golden Week) needing to be filled, myself and fellow JET Gemma set about planning a week’s jaunt that would take us in a triangle around the northern half of Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost major landmass.

First stop was Beppu, famous for its hot springs and reputation as a slightly trashy yet fun resort town – a kind of Nippon Blackpool if you will. While there we had ourselves the pleasure of a sand bath, whereby one dons a red gown, lies down in a pit of hot, black sand and is buried up to the neck in the stuff by the bathhouse’s attendants. You’re meant to lie there for about 15 minutes, while the sand slowly starts scalding the parts of your skin not covered by the gown and sweat slowly starts getting in your eyes. The volume of sand on top of you is mercifully low enough to make it possible to simply stand up once you’re done, and very good for skin it is too, I’m sure. The only problem I could see was the fact that I left the place smelling of earth, and in the knowledge that I now had black sand trapped in somewhat, well, hard to reach places shall we say…

As part of our onsen odyssey, we also took the time to visit a remote natural spring in the hills overlooking the town, maintained and kept tidy by local residents on a voluntary basis. Little more than a naturally heated pool with a small shack beside it to act as a somewhat limited “changing room”, this was surely about as natural as onsens get – just you, the hot sulphurous water and the elements. And three naked fat guys in their late fifties.

Yes, just because it’s the last word in al fresco soaking doesn’t mean that the standard onsen etiquette of bathing with nothing besides a small hand towel to cover one’s modesty is in any way deviated from. Gemma manfully went the full monty, despite the presence of no women whatsoever, what few there were loitering instead further back along the path. I’m sure neither of us violated any major unwritten protocol, and the men there (who scarpered soon after we entered the water) didn’t seem to mind at all. Funny, that…

We also found time to take in what’s arguably Beppu’s largest tourist attraction, the ‘hells’, large pools of naturally heated spring water, hot enough to produce steam. Legend has it (or the guidebook, at any rate), back in the day Christian missionaries would be thrown into these things, hence the origin of the name. These days the hells swarm with a multitude of tourists and school parties all queuing to see…some colored water.

The blue hell we saw was certainly quite pretty and was surrounded by pleasant gardens, with a random greenhouse thrown in for good measure. The mud hell contained hot bubbling mud that brought to my mind melodramatic scenes set in the arch-villain’s lair from Flash Gordon and James Bond films, which was quite diverting. The red hell, however, really did just come across as a warm bath into which someone had dumped a load of food coloring and beside which had constructed the mother of all souvenir shops. I think you know you're not on to a good thing when said shop seems to take up more square meters than the attraction itself. Hey ho, you win some, you lose some.

KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR

…was the rather frightening message flashed at me by my laptop about a month ago, shortly before it experienced the technological equivalent of a stroke. Thus followed days of increasingly random error messages (CRITICAL_ERROR, CANNOT_MOUNT_BOOT VOLUME, ABANDON_ALL_HOPE_AS_OF_NOW – alright, maybe not the last one), erratic behavior and frantic attempts by me to back up as much of my precious data as possible, and all this right before I was due to spend a week traveling around Kyushu.

In the event, I succeeded in having a very pleasant Golden Week during which I managed not to think about computers at all (details of which can be found elsewhere) and after returning, finally managed to coax the long-suffering bucket of bolts back to life again with the aid of a borrowed screwdriver and a replacement hard disk.

The original problem? Overheating, caused by failing to keep the coffee table it normally sits on adequately clean of dust, cigarette and incense ash, biscuit crumbs and other mess. Fans on laptops are often located on the underside of the machine, so if you’re an incorrigible slob like me, this gunge builds up over time (say, a year and a half), gets sucked underneath the computer, blocks up the fan’s grille, causes a dangerous buildup of excess heat and fries your hard drive. Consider yourselves warned, kids…