Kyushu Travel (Hakata and Nagasaki)
I had never been to Kyushu before, and it is a large island south west of the main island (Honshu). M’s school had started winter break and we immediately headed off to Hakata (Fukuoka) on the bullet train.
Hakata
The trip to Hakata took about 3 hours on the bullet train from Osaka, so we headed off in the morning and enjoyed the scenery as we wizzed through the countryside. We stayed near the train station and there was a nice mall nearby that we checked out and found some lunch.
Some of the big shrines being tourist destinations, there are many snack stores and gift shops in the area. Usually one can find a local ‘manju’ shop (Japanese sweets) with some freshly made yummies. This place was known for mochi with sweat azuki (red bean) cooked in what looks like mini waffle irons. The machine is semi-automated so we were mesmerized by the whole operation as we ate the said product.
After checking out the big shrine, we decided to head back to the hotel and warm up since it was getting quite cold outside. For dinner, we had to try the local specialty which is ‘motsu nabe’. Translated that means beef innards hot pot. There is actually a decent amount of motsu nabe in Osaka too, along with ‘horumon’ dishes which all dance with the various beef parts. There are many places in Hakata that serve this, but we found one next door to the hotel, which was perfect since we didn’t want to freeze outside for long. The place definitely had a funk as you walked in and M made some comments immediately, so she wasn’t going to enjoy her meal much. Maybe this is what cows smell like on the inside? Reminds me of that scene in Empire Strikes Back. Okay, it wasn’t too bad, especially once the food arrived. The nabe was quite yummy, all the veggies and meats cooked down into a nice stew, maybe some similarities to Menudo or other similar soups with mystery parts.
Before heading out the next day, we had to eat another famous local dish, which is Hakata style ramen! This is a style very popular in America too, which is a pork flavored broth ramen. Many folks have been to a famous chain Ichiran, which we had also recently been to in Osaka, so we decided to try Shin Shin (Japanses only site) and it was quite yummy. Something about ramen on a cold day!
Ureshino Onsen
Half way to Nagasaki, we decided to check out a onsen (hot springs) town to relax for a day. The town is pretty small, and we decided to stay at a place with a buffet dinner near the bus station. We also took the bus, because the trains didn’t offer a direct route and would require transfers to a bus and such, so it was going to be a big complicated. In any case, we stayed at a Yukari Resort Onsen Hotel, which is a chain of budget hotels. Let’s just say, we would like to forget this place. The food was actually pretty bad and low quality, and that’s kind of a big deal since it’s part of the stay. At least it was pretty cheap, especially after the usual travel discounts going on. I’d stay away from this place! Maybe some of the other hotels in the chain are better… but it was the worst food I had in Japan so far.
Nagasaki
We were happy to head out to Nagasaki the next morning, and stay a couple nights there. Nagasaki is actually a relatively small town, and most of the city is accessible via the street trolley. However, it is also one of the most unique towns in Japan, since it was an important port city starting around the 1600s. For a long time, Japan had cut itself off from the rest of the world and restricted trade and travel, but Nagasaki was still trading albeit with heavy restrictions. Partly due to the geography of being on the western end of Japan, it was the closest port to Europe and so they constructed a man made island where foreigners were allowed to land by ship and stay. The island is probably the size of about 5 city blocks, and has turned into a museum with some restorations of the buildings.
A scaled replica of Dejima, inside Dejima.
M really enjoyed the museum, there was a lot of western architecture mixed with Japanese influence and in fact, a lot of Nagasaki is this way. We checked out the famous Oura Church which is pretty rare since Christianity was banned for centuries during the isolationist years. In fact Christians were persecuted for many years, so it was interesting to read about some of their difficult history.
Of course, Nagasaki was the 2nd city that was destroyed by an atomic bomb during WW2. We decided to skip the memorial and museum on that subject, since M is still a bit young to understand that tragedy. I remember going to the one in Hiroshima when I was about 10, and I still can’t get the images out of my head! Some things you can’t unsee once you’ve seen them:( I do think adults should pay a visit though, only if it reminds us why Nagasaki should be the last city to be nuked, ever.
Moving right along, we checked out Glover’s Garden which was the estate of an entrepreneur from Scotland. He was famous for helping industrialize Japan, modern ship building and even more importantly, setting up early beer breweries in Japan.
Finally, a Nagasaki trip wouldn’t complete without a visit to a Castella store, which is a western influenced cake that is quite popular in Japan. The two most famous brands from Nagasaki have many stores in the local area, as well as quite a few smaller bakeries. Maybe next time we’ll try some of the smaller shops, but this time we stopped by the Bunmeido store.
And we made a quick stop in Nagasaki’s Chinatown, to eat the other famous dishes which are Champon and Sara-Udon. Champon usually is a white broth ramen with stir fry of vegetables and sea food on top. Sara-Udon is a version of pan-fried noodles, with obvious roots from China. Both are served in many places in Nagasaki and all over Japan too. We even used to find it in San Jose, CA at Ringerhut, until they closed:(.
Another neat place to see western influences were in the float displays from a big local festival. These floats are wheeled out and paraded around town… and the boats look like something from a pirate movie. Like I said, Nagasaki is a pretty unique place, and it felt like we were not in Japan sometimes!
All in all, the trip was quite fantastic, even though we were met with snow and cold rain on many days. The last day we were headed to the airport and a mini snow storm had hit the area. The highway was shut down, which meant our airport bus was not running and we ended up grabbing a taxi who took the back roads to take us to the airport. The driver was awesome, navigating through some tiny roads and got us to the airport in time! It wasn’t a cheap ride, took over an hour, but we made our flight back to Osaka. While we usually travel by train in Japan, Nagasaki to Osaka would have been many transfers and probably 6+ hours so a quick flight was a good choice. We were able to use United miles and fly for free. There are some amazing deals for domestic flights on ANA, so we’ll try to do something similar for a trip to Okinawa or Hokkaido someday.
