Shinkansen Again! - Kyotanabe, Japan
Kyotanabe, Japan
Where I stayed
Hostel Kagoshima Little Asia
Darkness turns to twilight as I open my eyes due to the alarm clock shouting next to my face. I roll around a bit and tell myself I need to get up, else I'll fall asleep again. I don’t think anyone will have any difficulty imagining what that’s like so I’ll forgo my usual descriptive tendencies for a moment. I grab my toiletries and head downstairs to the bathroom in order to fix myself up for the alarming amount of traveling I have in store for me today.
Breakfast. Mmm. One last day of Akemi’s breakfast and then on to hopefully pastures as green as I have them now.
With my bulging rucksack heaved onto my back, I exited the house as the rain starts to fall. Kazumi, kind gentleman that he is, immediately offered me a lift to the station, which I graciously accepted.
I jump into the car, but only after I carefully deposit my pack in the back, and gleefully watch the rain pour down on the front window, counting my blessings for not having to walk fully loaded in that waterfall.
Once I arrived at the station I said my final goodbyes to Kazumi and lugged me and mine onto the correct platform.
All around me water drips into little streams and gullies as I pace around the platform, waiting for a train to take me to Kyoto. From there I plan to grab a train to Shinosaka, one of the larger hubs for Shinkansen in Japan. Continuing from Shinosaka, I would take a train all the way to Miyakonojo, and end my day by renting a car and traveling the last leg to Kimotsuki driving on the left hand side of the road for the first time, all the while weathering the second typhoon I’ve encountered during my stay in Japan.
I’ll skip straight ahead to Shinosaka, where I leisurely take my time to get to the ticket vendor for the Shinkansen. One would think that I would realise I’d have to stand in line quite a lot in Shinosaka, especially considering the typhoon and Shinosaka’s hub status, but I did not. I was surprised, and had to queue for an entire hour, after which I had to wait for my train to come another hour and a half later.
This day’s itinerary had me traveling 25km to Kyoto, 50km to Shinosaka, 880km to Kagoshimachuo, 80km to Miyakonojo, and finally 50km to Kimotsuki; 1085 km in one day. This is certainly the most I’ve ever travelled in a day without flying.
I know I’ve been nothing but a walking, talking, and blogging advertisement for the Japanese bullet train, so some of my next few sentences may start to sound a bit repetitive.
When the train arrives at the station, no one is allowed on for the first ten minutes or so, keeping in mind that the train is plenty on time. Since this is a hub station the train will be reversing its route shortly. The entire inside of the train is first cleaned, and all the seats are turned around, so that they once more face the direction of travel. When the cleaning is finally done I can make my way in.
I’m standing inside of yellow lines painted on the platform, queuing with my fellow travellers. I hoist up my backpack and shuffle at the same speed as the person in front of me into the train. I look out for the size of the door opening, as I’ve hit my head that way a few too many times. Having properly inspected it, I am confident my head will not hit the door opening, but the backpack sticking out above my head isn’t so lucky, almost causing me to topple over backwards. Dip through the knees, enter train, undip knees. This will now become my mantra for the rest of my time here in Japan. I deposit my bag in a rack above me, take my seat (for many of these trains you must reserve a seat), and settle in. The seat is plenty big, I have more than enough legroom, and right next to me is an outlet to allow for unbridled use of electricity. Time to let this 11 hour journey start!
I don’t recall exactly where this was, but at a certain point in my journey we passed a lot of refineries and ports with big, chunky islands and boats in the distance and enormous stacked columns flaming at the top almost right next to us. This is a part of Japan I hadn’t seen before, and whenever I see these plants in the Netherlands I am always awed by their scale, it certainly made me think of the Netherlands for a spell.
From Shinosaka to Kagoshimachuo something changed. I switched trains, and I entered a part of the service that only travels the Kyushu region. I’d been told I would love the Kyushu region, if only for the fact that its people are said to be more hospitable. I didn’t really notice this to any great extent, mainly because I find Japanese people to be polite anyway, but I did notice on the Shinkansen. Every conductor or attendant would bow when they enter and bow when they leave. I was mostly wearing earphones so I didn’t hear exactly what they said when bowing, but I gather it was something profusely polite.
After a long journey, which I happily wiled away writing, listening to music, and watching films, I finally made it to Kagoshimachuo. The next task at hand was finding out which train would get me to Miyakonojo, so I could continue on to Kimotsuki. I quickly found out that there were no more trains going in that direction today, due to the typhoon I had just successfully dodged by taking a train to skirt its edges. The ticket attendant in Shinosaka told me something along these lines, however her English wasn’t very good, so I thought I misunderstood. When I arrived at Kagoshimachuo I saw the sun shining brightly with not a cloud in sight; I incorrectly calculated my chances to be good enough to make the assumption that trains would be going.
My original plan was no longer feasible, so I explored all my, very limited, options. I could rent a car, that was it. That would mean a seven hour journey by car. Previously I mentioned my inexperience with driving on the left hand side, and having to do that with a typhoon about for seven hours was a tad too daunting for my taste. Instead I found the cheapest youth hostel nearby to spend the rest of the day and decided to finish the last leg of my journey tomorrow. I got in touch with my host and told him of my predicament as well as my intention to keep him well updated on my plans.
I had been given directions to get to the hostel, but even so had difficulty finding my destination. One could argue that this is always the case, and they may be right, but this particular instance was an extraordinary case of not finding what I was staring at all along. I honestly must have passed by this place a dozen times before even thinking to go in for a closer look. The hostel was quite literally the first building that wasn’t the train station.
Anyway (remember to stretch this word out for proper comedic effect), I entered the hostel in a manner which I imagine has me silhouetted in the door opening, eclipsing what little sunlight came through from outside, due to my being tall with the added towering quality my backpack possessed.
I signed in and took my shoes off. Why did you have to take your shoes off, you ask?
You shouldn’t be asking! You are reading a blog about someone traveling in Japan, and as far as unusual customs are concerned this is a very well-known one. Stop asking silly question, you reader you.
You could ask me whether my gigantic feet fit the slippers I had to use instead of my own shoes. The answer to that would be a resounding no. They did not fit. Not even in the slightest. The entire heel didn’t fit in the slippers, so I tiptoed around the place as if I were wearing heels. In order to not get annoyed with having to walk like this, I imagined I was a princess. Instead of making it easier for me to deal with the tiptoeing, I had to chuckle so many times I kept losing my balance. Apparently serious-faced tiptoeing was the only way.
I threw my stuff on my bunk bed, grabbed my laptop, phone, and wallet, and headed out. It was about four pm if my memory serves, so I had quite a bit of day left to squander in Kagoshima. I felt slightly peckish, so I grabbed a rice ball in the convenience store, along with a cheap bottle of Japanese whisky, before heading up the road where I had previously seen…..
A MOUNTAIN
Okay, so maybe it simply looked like a mountain to me, living in Hollandia as the locals call it. I headed up for a view and some pictures. Here I saw something my host in Kyotanabe already mentioned: Japan is dying, its population is in a decline. He told me of his parents’ house in the absolute centre of Osaka. They are looking to sell it, but it simply won’t sell. He tells me the taxes are also quite steep on property, which is why most Japanese do not want to inherit their parents’ houses if they know they can’t sell them. Kazumi was hoping that AirBnB might be a way to solve both house vacancy and improve tourism, but most Japanese do not invite strangers into their homes, so the concept of AirBnB doesn’t appeal to most Japanese. How lucky I was to find Kazumi!
Here, in this corner of Kagoshima, all the houses built on these hill slopes put the Dutch dike houses to shame, yet over a quarter of them are uninhabited. This is the other side of Japan, where all the teenagers are moving into the big city centres, are taking up jobs in some kind of service industry or other, and are not bringing more food on Japanese tables. Kazumi told me that the Japanese are extremely lacking when it comes to self-sufficiency. They import most of their food and other raw materials. We think of Japan as a beautiful country, and it absolutely is, but it mostly consists of mountainous, uninhabitable area. I would really love to go to Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, and experience its extremely low inhabitants per km2, the lowest in the entire country. I don’t think I’ll be able to do that, as traveling from Kyoto to where I was initially headed, Kimotsuki, was already an entire day’s worth of traveling. In my remaining time making my way from here all the way north to Hokkaido would cost me and my Japan Rail Pass several days, not making it worth the effort anymore.
Making my way up this mountain I crossed a playground with kids playing who instantly and without fear started talking to me, some of them even knew some simple English. I squatted down and tried to make myself understood in the absolute bare minimum of Japanese I know and understand, but being on what to me felt and looked like a mountain, on a playground surrounded on one side by a forested mountain summit and on the other side houses built on said mountain, and immediately being addressed in the absolutely friendly and inquisitive manner of kids made quite the impression on me. After a few exchanges and the mention of Hollandia, which was met by laughs and curious glances, I left with a huge smile on my face.
Having spent the last week with Amy and Reena had been enormously fun, but being on my own again certainly makes my creative juices flowing. I’ve been walking around alone, and thoughts that would normally be funny insights I would share with my fellow travellers, or really anyone near me, regardless of whether I think they would find it interesting or not, now turn into something I pen (figuratively speaking, of course, as I write this on the laptop I bought specifically for this trip) everything down and every corner of the block I find myself looking for a spot to sit down to compose some thoughts.
Earlier on, as I entered the hostel at Kagoshima, I saw a man in the common room making a huge dinner and enough plates set around the common room table to feed about five, and a young girl about five or six years old, hanging around. I thought they were a group traveling together, but at this moment, as I’m sitting in the same common room eating a bite for myself, I see the man at the front desk sitting down and eating with them as well. I wonder whether they live here together or whether this is a once every so often type of affair. They appear to me to treat each other as a family, whether this is an actual or a makeshift one. Turns out it’s a birthday!!!
One of the locals even came up and talked to me, making my stay here instantly feel like I was part of a family affair rather than idly wiling away my hours in this hostel. I do not have much experience with hostels, but wonder whether this is a common occurrence. I don’t think it is, and therefore attribute it to the Japanese hospitality and generosity.
When I was looking for a new place to stay, which eventually led me to travel towards Kimotsuki, one of the people who replied to my general request for a place to stay in the area mentioned that she couldn’t host me immediately, but had I been a day later I would be welcome. This lady lives in Kagoshima, where I was stranded, so I asked whether her offer was still up for the next day. It was, so I cancelled my stay in Kimotsuki and started looking for things to do the next day, at the end of which I would be meeting up with Hiroko.
Deciding what I wanted to do was easy. Kagoshima isn’t an ordinary town; it’s right next to one of the most active volcanoes in the region! Tomorrow I would take a ferry across and explore a volcano! I spent the rest of my evening calmly drinking my beers and watching some films, working up a nice buzz before depositing my travel weary body in the bunk.