Kyushu: Kumamoto

Our next stop was Kumamoto, 2hours by train from Nagasaki. I thought it was going to be a small town for some reason, but it turned out to be a pretty decent sized city. When we arrived at the station, we took the tram to our hostel. When we got to the specified stop, we had a little trouble finding it, but we asked around and found it tucked into some back streets. An old lady greeted us and told us we couldn't check in until 5pm, so we left our baggage and went exploring.


I made this in paint....


We walked for about 10 minutes and arrived at Suizenji, a famous garden in the area. We were a little out of season, for everything was still a bit dead looking, but it was interesting none-the-less. The garden is made to simulate the Tokaido road, the first Japanese highway in the Edo period that stretched from Tokyo to Kyoto. They even had a mound that resembled Mount Fuji.


River in front of "Mt Fuji." Normally it looks greener.

After we explored the gardens, we exited to some street stalls. River bought some souvenir sweets, and I bought one of those big grapefruit-lemon-orange things. Very delicious, but it turned out the skin was about an inch thick, so the fruit inside really was not as big as we first thought. Very delicious, however.


yum!

After the garden, we decided to got to the Kumamoto castle next. It was a lot bigger than the previous castles I had seen, and even had a moat surrounding it! The walls were huge and it we went up a maze of slopes and stairs to get to the castle.


Me and some big castle walls.


River being a ninja (do you see him?) He caused quite a commotion, and a lot of Japanese tourists took pictures of him.

We went inside the castle which was transformed into a museum, and it was a little boring, even for my standards. We looked around a bit, then headed back to the hostel to check in.

The old lady who owned the hostel was very cute, and showed us to our room which turned out to be very Japanese style, which was a fun experience. It was a tatami mat room and we had to get our futons out of a closet. We had a private room this time, which was nice after having to share at our last hostel in Nagasaki.

The next day we went to Mt. Aso, and ACTIVE volcano about 2 hrs away by train. Then, at the little train station, we got on a bus that took us up the mountain and to a ropeway. We took the ropeway to the top of the mountain , where we arrived at the caldera of the volcano. Sometimes the caldera emits poisonous gasses and you cannot go to the top, but we were lucky and it was quite safe. While we had travelled such a long distance to see this one thing, it was way worth it. I have never before stood so close to the smoking top of a volcano! It was cold and windy at the top, but it was a delight.


Me with the smoking caldera. The water inside was so blue! Very cool.


River and the mountains. It was so cool up there!


This is funny not only because it is spelled wrong, but also because the caldera was smoking.

After we saw the top, we headed back to kumamoto. We had a little time and explored the city a bit, which was pretty cool. After that we headed back to the hostel. The next day we were heading to Kagoshima...our final destination.