This post will chronicle the adventures of Ken and Brett as they continue their ongoing piece-meal pilgrimage tracing the footsteps of Miyamoto Musashi, arguably the greatest samurai in Japanese history. It might also include snippets of our time in the hot-spring capital of Japan: Beppu.
It will most definitely NOT include the time when, after an hour of wandering around the seedy district of Omuta city looking for a cool darts bar and carefully avoiding hostess bars (where men pay to have pretty (or not) young (or not) women chat them up, pour their drinks and generally make them feel like big men) , we had the awkward misfortune of walking into ... a HOST bar. Everyone was confused. Also, this post will not include the extremely persistent young woman who was offering us massages at a suspiciously high rate. We declined.
Unfortunately, this post will also not include a section about Yufuin which is midway between Kumamoto and Beppu. Whenever we mentioned our upcoming trip to Kyushu, people would say, "Oh, you HAVE to visit Yufuin! It has beautiful onsen (hot spring baths) set in gorgeous natural scenery and a serene atmosphere that takes one back to a time before Japan's countryside was covered in concrete". Yufuin also had rooms starting at $130 per night so it was not a part of our itinerary.
Nonetheless, it was a fantastic trip - a pleasant change of scenery, something new to give Brett and I an extra spark to remind ourselves that we are in Japan and that it's a pretty sweet place to be, all thing considered.
Kumamoto Castle - one of the largest and "best" in Japan.
I barely got this shot off as the ninja was about to pounce. Ninja are like my bowels after Mexican food: silent but violent.
The approach to the main castle towers. The idea behind the winding zigzags when coming upon the castle is that it is more difficult for an attacking force to hit it directly; force them to run the gamut while having archers and gunners firing on you is not so easy when you have to wind your way through narrow streets.
It's really hard to picture this Goro character when I look around me and see so many tiny Japanese men.
An old old temple that was on our Musashi taxi-tour. I don't know anything about it except that it's over 400 years old and that it looks different from most other temples I've seen.
Our bus was supposed to leave at 10:59 and here we were still waiting for it. Brutal! Of course this is a joke as Japan's public transport system (especially trains) is so ridiculously on-time that you could set your watches to it, if you were wearing one, which I'm not.
A little hand-made sign warning about the perils of speeding. Note the extremely high revolutions per minute and the speedometer reading 250 km/hr!!
Modern Japan.
A lady beside us on the train as we rode through Aso/Yufuin landscape.
When you see a nose this big, you have no choice but to do as so many others have done before you, and pick it.
Yukata provided provided for us at our hotel in Beppu. People staying would just walk around the hotel in their yukata...going to the hotel restaurants...bars...baths... awesome.
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