DAY FOUR: SHIMABARA > KUMAMOTO

State of mind: fatigued
Current soundtrack: Ultraseven X - Groove of X (Komoguchi Yuuya)

Had ANOTHER hot bath today—in the wine-infused rotenburo! This may yet explain why I feel somewhat drunk and sleepy. :P

Grabbed breakfast and hopped a ferry to Kumamoto (much faster than driving all right round the island).

The guide provided breadcrusts, and nearer the destination we fed the kamome - black-headed gulls, only in their winter plumage so they were pale-headed instead. Noisy rascals all as they snatched the crusts from our hands. Got several shots of them—yay for high shutter speed!

Crossed some water and headed for Kumamoto Castle—it’s almost done up for the 400th anniversary this year. But right at the gate were two young men dressed up in period armour. One was not bishie. The other one WAS. I think you can see my devious little teeth gleaming in that image.

It was only the castle's top bits that were still under reconstruction when I went. Lots and lots of exhibits to see, most of which involve the Hosokawa clan (who, it seems, did many great things). And I DO mean lots and lots! Five floors! Helmets, historical timelines, spears, reconstructions, crests, yokestones, donators...the list goes on.

Had a sukiyaki lunch and heard, of all things, Itsuka no Merry Christmas by B’z. Patutlah it sounded so familiar, I have the House of Strings instrumental…

Next was Suizenji Park, preceded by a stop for ‘ikinari dango’ and tea. The former are slices of sweet potato topped with mild red bean paste and wrapped in mochi. Apparently they’re ikinari because they’re made so ‘suddenly’, according to the auntie there when I questioned her. Not a sweet potato person, so it was a bit meh—but they had sweet potato EVERYTHING there. A fan would have been halfway to heaven.

Headed for the park and fed the ducks—or rather, tried to without the gulls kapo-ing all the food. There are also carp in the big old pond, bloody huge ones, and occasionally they would bump into the gulls for shits and giggles. Well, I giggled. The gulls mostly squawked, and if you had wet, scaly fish nose up your butt, I'm sure you'd squawk too.

What EVERYONE failed to mention kthxbi is that the park contains a Shinto shrine. Hey, I can’t get a proper Buddhist talisman, Shinto will do. Performed ablutions and obeisance, bought an omamori for exams/work and an omikuji. Took photos of the last and tied it to the tying-place, and then we were off again.

Next was, well, Singaporean tour mah. SHOPPING. We headed for the Kumamoto shopping district. It was nice and there was plenty to look at (including a bish or two). They even have a blood donation centre. THAT'S taking it onto the streets! There was an Animate, but being out of touch with that scene (and desperately seeking a toilet for much of that time) I found nothing of interest (…except maybe the stranger who lost control of her bladder, oh, yes, and KIDCHAN’S DOUBLE WORKING THERE.) Got some health tea, a wall-scroll and a second-hand copy of Katamari(!!!) for the PSP. (No UFE 0 D:)

Arrived at the hotel in a state of near-exhaustion (ANA Newsky ailabyu nao), went for station ramen (…not as nice as I remember it), muddled through getting train tickets and stumped back to bed.

Tomorrow I have to learn a few key phrases: namely, ‘please take us to X’ for taxis and ‘is there a taxi stand nearby?’ Becooooos hey hey HEY, TOMORROW IS ULTRAMANLAND!

Merry Christmas, moi! ♥

P.S. – My mikuji said this, by the way.

Yuudachi no//ame wa miru/miru //hareyukite//kozue suzushiku//semi no//naku nari
The evening shower fades; on a branch, the cooling cries of the cicada

Toki ga kite omou koto wo shidai shidai ni dekite koufuku no mae ni atsumaru keredo yoku yoku mono wo kangaete shinai to fui no koto ga ate son wo suru koto ga aru Kore wo kokoroete sureba yoi
While the time will come and your thoughts will gradually come true to bring you good fortune, do things without thinking them through and the unexpected will bring about losses. It is best to remember this.

Unsei Suekichi
Luck: Slightly lucky. Otherwise known as the meh-why-bother result. ;)

Negaigoto: Odoroku koto ga aredo Awateneba kanau
Wishes: Surprising things may happen, but hasten not and it will come true
Machibito: Kuru deshou
Awaited person: Will probably come
Usemono: Chikai tokoro ni arimasu
Lost things: Somewhere nearby
Tabidashi: Sashikae wa nai
Beginning travel: No replacement (wt?)
Akinai (shoubai): Sawaganeba rieki
Business: Profit if a fuss is not made
Gakumon: Ayaushi Zenryoku wo chakujitsu ni yare
Studies: Dangerous. Go steadily at full power. (Alamak!)
Arasoi: Mi wa katsu ga ima wa ashi
Struggles: You will win later, but things look bad now
Renai: Ima wa mada dame desu
Romance: Now is still not a good time (Oh. Tee. El.)
Osan (Shussan): Anzan Sango wo taisetsu ni
Childbirth: Easy birth. Take care during the postpartum period.
Yautsuri (Teni) : Yoroshikarazu
Moving house: Not good
Yamai (Byouki): Ki wo tsuyoku shiteba anshin
Sickness: Remain strong of spirit and all will be well
Endan: Seii de sesshi kanjou wo osae yo
Marriage proposals: Make contact with sincerity and suppress your emotions (Supp—but doesn't that defeat the purpose?)

Chiisai sakaki no sono hitoeda ni kokorometaru mitamagushi Tatoe kyoman no zaihou (takara) wo tsunde mo, takara ni oshimi ga kakari, hokori ga tsukeba, mattaku michibe no ishi (rooftile-stone) mo onaji (douyou) de, kamisama wa fujou wo uketamawanu. Kami-sama ni tsunagu kokoro no tsuna wa, aku made kiyokunakereba kamisama ni tsuujinai.
On a little branch of the sakaki hangs the holy lot. Even if you compile a great treasure, one will be loath to use it; if pride should appear, thou art the same as a roof-tile by the roadside, and the gods will not accept your impurity. The cord that binds the gods to your heart must be completely pure, or it will not get through to them. [+/-] Yuudachi no ame wa miru miru...

DAY THREE: NAGASAKI > SHIMABARA

State of mind: boneless
Current soundtrack: Ultraseven X - Arl (J.S. Bach Cantata No. 51) (Saitou Takahiro)

Onsen today, yes. But before that…

Started the day with a big breakfast and checked out, heading for the long-delayed Glover Gardens. It’s at the top of a hill, past a storybook museum (!!) and at the end of a looooong shopping street.

Seems the three most-pimped things in Nagasaki are chanpon, sara-udon (fried udon?), castella sponge cake and kakuni manjuu. Popped up on every second sign I saw!

Right, the garden. It was…a bit meh, actually, as we were slightly rushed through the whole thing (Well, I was. Oo look, a tree...*dawdle*). It includes bits of Japan’s first foreigner settlement, Madame Butterfly memorabilia, and Japan’s first asphalt road and tennis courts, but honestly? Not all that pretty and I still don’t know who the heck ‘Glover’ is. Seems to be a preserved foreign residence/settlement, with a ‘performance art’ museum (read: nifty shape-based floats)

But you have to admit, some of the floats damn cool. Shachihoko FTW! Look at the splashiness!

The Peace Memorial was a bit better...well, sort of. We ended up in the Atomic Bomb Museum instead, if you're going to be pedantic. There’s a big old gold-coloured statue in front of that to commemorate all the teachers/students who perished. The tour group went straight ahead into the museum after some pic ops, but they missed a very beautiful statue off to the side of two girls flying gloriously. It’s based on a painting by Matsuzoe Hiroshi and is…quite uplifting. You need this just before going in, let me tell you. No pictures were allowed, so I sketched up a storm. (Thumbnails for now, btw. Click for a larger view.)

The memorial has a good, interesting use of space and ambient sound. Mind-stopping/changing exhibits. I’d recommend this place to anyone who comes down to Nagasaki, just maintain some respect for the site. Walk through and soak it in, and never mind the maudlin copywriting at the beginning. It’s best enjoyed as a long, quiet walk with no major interruptions. Which is what someone should have told the @#*^~in’ Taiwanese tour group who entered. “AND THIS IS THE THINGIE FROM SOMEWHERE. AND OVER HERE AR WE HAVE THIS DOOHICKEY FROM SO-AND-SO”. I’m getting a headache remembering how the guide’s voice cut like a chainsaw through the smooth silence. OK, so y’all read no Japanese or English. But please, please for the love of mercy: Shush! It felt so paiseh just being in the same room with those people. (And it just occured to me. Doesn't the place produce Chinese pamphlets? Hey, boss, here's our next comm. service job. It would be brill. :D)

Rant aside, the place is quite…depressing? Blood-curdling? Chilling? Awe-inspiring? It’s kind of hard to say. Maybe all of that. You look at the blistered trees and things with shadows burned on them from the heat; at the melted glob of rosary; at the cathedral which was torn down during Sakoku and rebuilt and FLATTENED by Fat Man (only one wall remained, slightly warped inward); at the people who were peppered with debris like machine-gun fire when the wind blew back into the hypocenter (this is where mushroom clouds come from); at the cancerous spleen vs the normal one; at the amount of nukes still out there today. I didn’t read a lot of the testimonials, fearing I’d dissolve into tears there and then, but what stuck with me was this:

A girl, 10 at the time, had a 2-year-old sister trapped under a large wooden beam. Many sailors tried to move it; they could not. Girl’s mother came back from the fields, where she’d been harvesting eggplants. She’s covered in shrapnel. Her body is burned purple from the intense heat. Forget all clothes. She’s naked, wounded and exhausted. The daughter called out, she gave the sailors a long look, and she put her shoulder under the beam and heaved. IT MOVES.

The girl went free, but all the skin came off the mother’s shoulder and it was stripped to the bone. She died in agony later that night.

It’s not a pleasant image, but it stays, and is touching. To me, anyways.

I came away feeling very…tired. Bought a book about the Hiroshima Panels (also incredibly depressing) and headed back to the bus.

Moving on to lighter things (must try!) the group headed out to the Peace Gardens (yay!) There was a big blue-green statue there (10 m high) with a little moat around it. It’s a very tranquil place. At one end is Big Blue, part Buddha* and part God; at another is a fountain, in memory of all those who died with pleas for water on their lips. The streams form a sort of wing shape, ala a crane.

Through the park/garden/area are bits of preserved Nagasaki...prison, and statues from various countries, hoping for peace. NZ’s one was really nice; Germany’s was blocky and square and, er, Germanic; Bulgaria’s had a kind of grace to it. It all makes you feel even worse when you recall missionaries first came to Japan through Nagasaki and it still got the shit bombed out of it. Makes you feel more hopeful when you see how beautiful and calm and all-together Nagasaki is today.

A quick lunch at a Chinese restaurant and we left Nagasaki for Shimabara. On the way we stopped near Mt. Unzen and went up to a lookout point. Bought some loquat sweets (nice, but meh) and saw, would you believe it, a big old Harley-Davidson. It belonged to one of three very old Japanese chappies (< = 79) whom we got pally with before leaving. Big strong bikers with hearts of gold, travelling Asia...

...But I cannot really account for THESE on the Beemer-ojisan's bike. O_o;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Ohgodpleasebeusingthemformereaestheticvaluepleasebeusingthemformereaestheticvaluepleasebeusingthemformereaestheticvalue

It was then time to go again, but there was another stop—a buried village, smothered in Fugendake’s pyroclastic flow of 1991. O_o;;;;;; Luckily everyone had been previously evacuated, so nobody died or was injured—even M.Y. can only take so much death and destruction in one day. Houses got buried up to the roofs, though. They run a little cottage industry-thingie nearby, and I mean this because the price stickers say ‘XYZ made by so-and-so-san’ etc. Very nice.

We finally stopped for the night at Shimabara Kowakien, a ryokan-hotel combo jobbie. ZOMG, SWISH. We were treated to a lovely Japanese dinner (I dare not say kaiseki, as it probably wasn’t), and there was of course the ONSEEEEEN. To be more specific, the ROTENBUROOOOO. It was very appealing, once you get past the ‘argh naked boobies naked with other people’ mindset. I went twice! They have a yuzu-infused tub *bob bob* and a normal tub, which is larger (and somewhat steamier?). I intended to check out the outdoor baths the first night, but my body had other thoughts; 3 m out the door, at night in early winter, in the raw, and I had to turn around and flee. I honestly felt FREEZING. Plucked up courage once more and tried again, but a cold wind blew s-o-f-t-l-y through the door and I finally admitted defeat. For now.

I feel very clean and shiny. I’m doing it again tomorrow! Now I shall curl up in my futon(!!) on the (tatami!!!) and prepare to don a yukata(!!!!) in the morn.

As if it was possible to love Kyushu even more. :D

* It's not just the face; upon further inspection while prettying up the pictures for blog consumption, it appears that Big Blue may have a third eye.