Kyoto - 14th/15th April. Mum, Jetty and Poppy (grandparents) and Melva (great aunt) came to Japan for 2 weeks. They flew into Osaka and I went up to meet them in Kyoto. I only went for the day and I am glad I did as there was a mix up at the hotels. The travel agent in Australia had mucked up their coupon and put them at the wrong hotel. I guess there will always be a problem when there are two hotels of the same name. After some muck around, some talking in Japanese, (yes, sometimes I can bluff my way through), they were sent by taxi to the correct hotel. The following day I took them to two of my favourite places in Kyoto; Kinkakuji and Nijo Castle. It was quite cold but very beautiful as it was the time of the cherry blossoms. Nijo Castle was freezing but the squeaky nightingale floor always keeps you moving and amused! As I had a karate grading the following day back at Yukuhashi I got the Shinkansen back home. It was somewhat nerve-wrecking leaving your family in a country you encouraged then to come to with no guide, but they did spendidly as they made their way down to Yukuhashi over the next 3 days. Unfortunately I had to work that week so was unable to meet back up with them after my grading.
My grading was good. I attained my purple belt, and as you can see I got purple arms. I've added this so everyone know that you MUST ICE BRUISES. I did it once for about 5 minutes. Definately not long enough!
Yukuhashi 19th, 20th 21st. Thankfully my family arrived safely to Yukuhashi on the Wednesday night. That night we went out to dinner with my karate sensei, his wife and one of the karate students, Jiro. Jiro had studied English at University so was a great help during the dinner converstation. There was a lots of different Japanese food ordered and we ate a great deal of it. Poppy and mum tasted and loved sashimi! It was a fairly amusing night and my karate sensei even asked my mum if it was OK if I married a Japanese guy! He is constantly trying to find me a boyfriend/husband so I will stay in Japan, although I was a bit surprised, and very amused that he asked my mum's permission. On the Thursday night we went to dinner with Yuki and her family. I was very glad for them to meet as Yuki is my closest friend in Japan. We ate Yakiniku. It's where you get little bits of meat and cook it yourself on a hot plate in the middle of the table. Unfortunately I had karate so couldn't eat very much. After the dinner my family watched my karate practice. My karate sensei was very pleased they watched and liked it. He even had all the student line up and introduce themselves to each of my family members. On the Friday night it was my work's turn to take my family out for dinner. The bosses of my department, the three elementary teachers and even the chief of education came. It was a great night and with lots of translating we were able to have converstations about politics, the pension, tax and much more. Not exactly the usual Japanese-English table conversations.
During the day on Thursday and Friday Terry was kind enough to be their guide and took them around the countryside. I am still not sure where they went but they covered a lot of miles and both Terry and my family had many stories to tell.
Kumamoto - 22nd April. I decided to take my family to one of my favourite places in Japan... Kumamoto. I hired a car as I wanted the flexibility to go to Mt Aso. At the castle it was interesting to see the advance they had made in the restoration of the other buildings surrounding the castle. Maybe next time I go they will be finished. It was fairly cold at Kumamoto but Suizenji is beautiful no matter how bad or good the weather is. There was even mist/steam rising off the water! After the garden we lost Jetty and Melva in the shops! There decided it was a great time to buy many souviners. For dinner we had Yakiniku.
Mt Aso - 23rd April. In the morning we drove out to the Mt. Aso area. After driving around the crater for a while (yes, a little lost), we made it to Mt Aso. The first photo is Aso from a distance and the other up close in to the crater. Aso was more active/hotter than the last time I went and were able to see the green surface when the wind blew the right way. Mum and I were trying to get good photos inside the crater and I happened to find a good spot so I shouted "Quick mum, come here". I never knew I had so many mums. I think 4 were female, 2 were male and were of all different nationalities. We got some great shots anyway. At Aso you are able to ride up on horse back. I felt sorry for the horses that were there, they looked so exhausted. It is obvious they aren't in good condition and/or the sulphur in the atmosphere effects them greatly. I wouldn't expect they would have a long life expectancy. Jetty decided to check out the bunkers. Luckily she is short enough that she wouldn't hit her head. When we finished looking we made the decent. The fog was SO thick I could only see at most 10 metres ahead of me. I even complained that the car ahead should put on his light.... He did have his lights on! At a section the fog cleared and we all jumped out to get pictures of the view. Within 2 minutes you couldn't see a thing as the fog had caught up. From Aso we drove over the mountain towards Yufuin on oue way back to Yukuhashi. On the mountain a man grew scultures. They were amazing. I am a fan of the car we hired. Over the whole weekend of driving I used about $40 (AUST) in petrol!!!
Matsuyama - 24th April. We caught the train from Yukuhashi to Beppu and caught the ferry across to Yawatahama. You can see that the ferry ride was very relaxing, especially in the massage chair! On arrival to Yawatahama I was amazed to see the farms on the side of the mountains. I hadn't seen this in Japan until then. Yawatahama is mostly mountains so the people there haven't got a choice but to plant things on the sides of the mountain. We then caught the train to Matsuyama. By the time we got to the castle it was near closing time so we decided not to go to the main part but walk down the mountain, past the garden and along the 'moat'. They are currently trying to rebuild the castle and its walls. I was amazed to see that each of the rocks were numbered. I don't think you would see this kind of thing in Australia. On the moat they had small houses for the swans and each pair were penned off from the other pairs. There were some cheeky little ducks that decided to race me along the water way. They could swim surprisingly fast. By the time we had finished this walk we were desperate to eat food. I decided to go to a small place down a little roadway. The lady said it was OK if I brought 5 people and in we went. I could see the shock of Jetty and Melvas faces of what we walked into and it wasn't a good shocked look. The entire restaurant would be considered a smallish room in an Australian house. The kitchen floor space was about 1.5 metre by 3 metres. The lady spoke no English and somehow I managed to order food and understand what we were about to eat. She then began to prepare our meal. Jetty was amazed how this lady could possibly prepare 5 meals in a space so tiny. We got rice, 3 peices of tempura fish, tempura sauce, pickles, boiled vegetables and miso soup. It was very delicious. Poppy was amazed at how good the tempura was. I am actually glad that I was able to take my family to a very traditional place to eat while they were in Japan.
Takamatsu - 25th April. Again we got up and caught the train. On the train we saw much of the landscape including these workers in the rice field. We dropped our bags off at the hotel and went to Ritsurin Park. It was very beautiful. This garden is worth a trip to Shikoku. There were many pre-school kids there which was very cute but had the carers and/or parents worried they were getting in the way. Kids that cute are never in the way. One little boy decided that the little steam was a good place to have a pee. We thought this was very funny but his teacher was really embarrassed. The last picture is of a mall we found. The bicycles definately had right of way. It was quite scary at times. I took Jetty, Mum and Melva into the 100 yen store ($1 store) and they were amazed at the things you could buy. They are very different to the $1 stores you get in Australia which just have junk.
Takamatsu - 26th April. To prevent having to walk back to the hotel we mangaged to squeeze 5 peoples' luggage into 3 lockers at the station. We then took the JR to Yashima. There, we went to Shikokumura. This is a village were they have brought residential houses from all over Shikoku to be viewed. In the villiage they have a theatre, a vine bridge and many beautiful gardens. The vine bridge is an imitation of the ones in central Shikoku. Don't look too closely at this one as you will see the vines are wrapped around steel cables. Jetty and Melva were the first ones across and they were camplaining about how hard to was to walk across with their little feet. I think that were a little worried about breaking through it. Poppy, on the other hand, stomped across at lightning speed. This place was very interesting from the way the buildings were held together and by what materials to the way they extracted sugar from the sugar cane. This place was very popular with pre-school kids. One was nice enough to pose for me infront of the tulips. The fishing boats were also very interesting. I don't know how they worked in them considering there is no way they coud've stood up. Squatting inside would have been a problem no matter how short you were. After we finished there we went across the famous Seto Ohashi Bridge. It is the longest two-tiered bridge system in the world at 13.1 km. It is quite amazing. That night I farewelled my family and caught the train back to Yukuhashi. They stayed the night in Okayama and caught the train to Narita Airport near Tokyo to fly home.
20th May Ian, Kanapu and I set off for our Yakushima trip at 6:40am Saturday morning from Futsukaichi (near Hakata). We got the Shinkansen and Tsubame to Kagoshima and the Toppy Ferry from Kogashima Port to Yakushima. We got a taxi to take us to the start of our climb instead of a bus to give us more daylight hours. Our taxi driver was hilarious. After he agreed to take us, he looked at me and said "Are you from India?" We weren't sure why he asked me that until he said that India was the only country he had been to. He was the Japanese equivalent to driving Miss Daisy (hopefully more than my family understand that expression). He was more interested in talking to us than driving us where we wanted to go. His conversation gave us great amusement for the rest of the hike. The start of the hike was through tourist nature area but it wasn't long before Ian said "Here's the track". Compared to what we had been walking on it was nothing more than a water runway, but off we went. I didn't take many photos during the first part of this hike mainly because I was trying not to die. It was definately one of the few times I have pushed my body to its limit. I wasn't worried about my life flashing before my eyes, I was worried that there would be trees flashing before my eyes as I tumbled back down the mountain. Some of the steps up were huge and I wished at this time that I had inherited height like my brother. Between the three of us we have decided that the best hiking body would be long legs to get up and down the steep steps and a short body so you can get under the trees and branches. One the following photos, that looks like tree roots.... that is actually the track of an easier section. Much to my amazement I made it through the first day and still managed to easily finish the day's hike easily within the time required. The first 3 photos are of us on top of a rock, on top of a mountain, not too far from the first hut. When we stumbled across the hut we were a little surprised. It was like a tool shed, and not like what we had seen on a video on the ferry. Luckily no one was there so we weren't required to put up the tent. Half an hour later we were joined by a Japanese hiker who earned the nickname Chainsaw during the night. Hmmm! Very funny but I would've preferred more sleep. 21st May. We set off hiking at about 6:45am in search of Miyanoura Dake. On this section we saw many more people and were surprised at the amount of Obaachan, and Ojiisan's there were. Obaachan-s and Ojiisan-s are grandparents... so people in their 70s (about). After some very slow hiking on the up-hills from me we made it to the top of Miynoura Dake. This mountain is 1935m high making it the highest mountain in Kyushu. After a well deserved break we made our way down and came across the lodge we firstly intending on staying at but it was only 11am, so we continued past Joomon Sugi, the oldest tree in Japan. It's age is estimated at about 7000 years old! Around this part of the trail there were boards and steps which made the day alot easier to handle. We passed many tourists and I got both a "sugoi" and a "sazaesan". "Sugoi" is "wow!" and I think it was because of my pack, and, "Sazaesan" is a famous Japanese comic stip of a lady who is always rushing because she is running late. We soon met up with a small railway track and walked along that for quite a while. We then broke off from the track and proceeded up another steep hill (root track photo). I was fine for all about 5 minutes and then my body started to give up. I think it was nearly 3/4 up I surrendered and gave the tent poles to Ian. Getting up the rest of the hill was still hard but definately easier. After that there wasn't any more steep hills, luckily for Ian who had bet his Kit-kat on it. The walk down was really difficult but easier than the up hills. On the last day we managed to hike 11.5 hrs. It is supposed to be two 7hr day hikes. Our motivation was a hot bath/shower and a good feed. Our intention was to stay at the campsite but when we got there, we were very disappointed. There was absolutely nothing there... I am not sure if there was even a toilet. We asked the taxi driver if he knew of a place. He took at to this lady's house who was absolutely amazing. She poured us a bath, and whilst we were at dinner she made our beds (futons). Yukushima is a must! I am tempted to return there as there are many beautiful waterfall around the island.
