Day 12 - A New Island

Saturday 1st November …. It’s November 😳

While having my morning cup of tea and watching the hilarious morning Japanese TV yesterday, I saw an advert for a Culture Market this weekend in Hiroshima …. Well I think that’s what it was … the advert was in Japanese 😉

So I did a quick search but couldn’t find anything about it, but I did find one thing…. This weekend is a holiday weekend.  On Monday it is Culture Day and schools and government buildings are closed for the day, so it’s going to be a busy weekend with people going home for the long weekend and organising little holidays.

We still decided to keep to our plan for today and go to Kumamoto.  Kumamoto is on Kyushu Island (Hiroshima is on Honshu Island), so we are going on quite a trek …. About 2 hours on the Shinkansen.  Kyushu is the southwestern most of Japan’s islands and is known to be quite tropical.

Just a quick tangent here … apart from yesterday, the average temperatures we’ve been having have been around 22 degrees….. it’s going to be a shock coming home.

Anyway - back to Kumamoto.  There is a castle and this is not just any ordinary castle…. It’s one of the top 3 in Japan.  There’s also a place called Sakuranobaba Josaien which is an area of traditional buildings with the most delicious food and souvenirs unique to Kumamoto

Remember what I said about this being a holiday weekend …. Oh my god …. Hiroshima station was rammed but we were hoping this was people coming to visit … but as we made our way to Platform12 for the Shinkansen….. there were huge queues.  Yeah - it seemed half of Hiroshima is coming with us.

I’ve never seen it so busy - people were standing on the train and I’ve not seen that before of the Shinkansen.  Two hours later, we got to Kumamoto and most of the train got off with us….. but again, we are the only foreigners.

After getting our bearings, we caught the Tram to the Castle.

Noooo … that’s not the castle 🤣

This is the castle…

We didn’t go in this castle … we’ve already done a few this trip (makes a change from Temples and Shrines) and there were a LOT of steps to get to it…..

We did go in the Castle Museum which was fun.  Lots of interactive things to do, mainly for the kids, but no signs to say we couldn’t play.

We noticed on the way, there seemed to be a food festival…. They are following us! So we made our way over to that… it was a Thai based festival … the smells were amazing.

We met this guy on the way …. I think he was once the gaffer and built the castle….

I didn’t realise that I hadn’t taken too many photos today until I started today’s blog …. 

We are now hoping that the journey back wouldn’t be quite so busy….. yeah - well that didn’t happen ….. sooooo busy.  The train was at bursting point and people must have been desperate for a seat because they sat next to Scott … that very rarely happens …. People will stand rather than sit next to him …. 😳

We got back to a very busy Hiroshima station about 6ish …  my feet are throbbing.  But just time to pick up food and get back to the house.

I think tomorrow might be a PJ day …. We both need a day off and this is a holiday… but we’ll see how that goes…. Might have a look for that Culture Market.

Until tomorrow - oyasumi nasai ❤️