The Little House of Concrete

After looping around the Deep North and giving the leaves further down the archipelago time to start turning, the second week of the rail pass leg takes us out of the Alps, all the way down to the end of the island chain.

Kagoshima, here we come, with a final leg all the way back to Osaka...

Saturday, 3 November 2012

The hot spring onsen experience is one of the drawcards, but many visitors are there to ride the rather splendid little railway running out of Unazuki Springs.

Operating from mid-April to November every year, the Kurobe Torokko Electric Railway was initially used to carry workers to the construction sites for the hydroelectric dams in the Gorge. 

It’s just over twenty kilometres from Unazuki to the terminus at Keyakidaira, and the trip takes around eighty minutes each way.

On the way, the railway passes through the steepest V-shaped gorge in Japan, crossing twenty-one bridges and snaking through forty-one tunnels. 

It passes several onsen locations hot springs, including Kuronagi and Kanetsuri, and Keyakidaira offers scenic options including the Sarutobi Ravine and the Man-eating Rock and Meiken Hot Spring.

That, however, is getting ahead of the developing narrative.

We bunked down early the night before, with Hughesy claiming fatigue as a significant contributory factor to Friday morning's condition. 

I emerged from a deep slumber a good eleven hours after I drifted off, but I wasn't looking forward to what I was likely to find when daylight arrived.

I'd been warned this was the day when the entire array of warm clothing would be called into play.

The best scenario I could hope for was a maximum temperature around ten at Unazuki in the afternoon. The temperature would probably be in the low positive range when we hit the train and made our way into the mountains.

Breakfast was another take on the Viking but featured almost nothing recognisable to the Western eye apart from the pastry and coffee options. 

I managed a hearty enough start that fuelled the day's activities and got me to dinner time without the need for anything else.

With breakfast done, we dropped the Black Monster and Madam's backpack at Reception and made our way a couple of hundred metres along the street to the Kurobe Torokko Station. 

Traffic wardens directing private vehicles and tour buses into their respective parking areas confirmed we would be dealing with significant numbers of keen sightseers.

We were booked on the morning's second train, departing at 8:18, and the crowd for the 7:57 were queued behind the barriers as we arrived. 

There's a variation on the booking side of things on the Torokko. Your reservation gets you a seat in the carriage. As far as which seat is concerned, it's a case of first in, best dressed.

They open the barriers about ten minutes before the scheduled departure time. What follows isn't quite a stampede, but by the same token, it isn't the casual stroll you'd be taking if you knew you had a pair of guaranteed seats.

The journey starts with a climb through the first of many tunnels. The train emerges just before the 166-metre long ShinYamabiko Iron Bridge, the longest bridge on the route and the red-painted structure they use in the publicity material. From there, the track passes the Unazuki Dam, the first of the structures that brought the line into existence.

As you proceed, there's a castle-like structure that presumably fulfils some role related to generating electricity, though just what that purpose might be remains a mystery to this observer. 

Other structures en route are predictably utilitarian.

The autumn leaves were the main reason for the crowds being there, and they were quite magnificent. But there are plenty of items of interest to catch the keen observer's eye. 

Branches and tunnels that run off the mainline, for example, and a long tunnel to allow workers to get down when winter snows remove trains from the transport equation.

Suspension bridges across the gorge at a couple of points allow workers and, presumably, trekkers, to cross from side to side though one of them doesn't have handrails. 

That one is for the monkeys.

High above, snow-capped mountains tower over the line, uncomfortably close to the travelling observer. I prefer my snow-clad peaks in photographs, not clearly visible through the windows on a day where the temperature's hovering unpleasantly close to zero.

The mountains climb higher after you cross Moriishi Bridge, and the line passes isolated onsen resorts on its way to Keyakidaira. Once you're there walking tracks allow you to get up close and personal with the coloured leaves.

Given the threat of rain and the temperature, I wasn't the most enthusiastic participant in the up hill and down dale ramble that followed

In any case, my eyes weren't handling a continuous display of coloured leaves all that well. 

They're a magnificent sight, but after a couple of hours, the visual richness becomes overwhelming.

The walk gave me one of the stranger sights I've come across in a country where there's no shortage of items guaranteed to baffle and bemuse a Western observer. 

I rounded a corner to find a Japanese father doing up an eight-year old's shoelaces. 

Maybe the kid wasn't quite eight but certainly looked old enough to manage to tie up the laces without assistance. 

While Dad got the laces in order (we don't want anyone tripping now, do we?), the kid was casually playing a computer game.

I'd passed the camera over to The Supervisor because I didn't think I'd be needing it. Just as well. I suspect an attempt to snap the scene would have produced an ugly incident.

As we made our way back, construction work tricked us into a detour that took us down to a platform just above the river bed. There were more coloured leaves to see and a thermal foot bath for tired feet. 

Not being in the market for a foot bath and not looking forward to the climb to the station, I wasn't impressed at all by the situation.

The definitely not gruntled, but not quite disgruntled factor continued as we made our way across the bridge, headed towards the Man-Eating Rock. 

The trail looked like it was going to meander along for quite a way, the weather continued to threaten, and the backpack was a bit of a load. 

The critical point was no obvious turn back point on the map, and I dreaded the prospect of let's just see what's around this corner.

I knew, more or less, what was around the corner. I was sure there was a similar view around the next one, the one after that and the one after that one. 

I was sure they were all quite magnificent spectacles, but I was more or less spectacled out.

I would have liked to check if we could switch to an earlier train for the descent. 

The switch to Nagano involved moves between connecting trains. As it turned out, we'd just missed one that may or may not have had room for us. 

The next was a workers' train. So we had to stick with the plan that gave us six minutes to alight in Unazuki, collect our luggage, and make it to the station, up one flight of steps and down another, negotiating the purchase of tickets along the way. 

Had it been a JR line, the ticket purchase would be unnecessary. Wave the rail pass, and you're fine.

In any case, after a rest and drink, the descent was as spectacular as the ascent. 

We were first in the carriage, which got us the best position for alighting quickly at the other end. The bloke in Reception at the hotel produced our bags as soon as he sighted us. We made it to the ticket office at the station just as the train was about to depart.

A couple of tickets from a friendly conductor upstairs, a mad scramble down the stairs and we just (literally) made it as the train door closed. 

There was another train we could have caught half an hour later. But that would have produced the same mad scramble at the other end when we transferred from Toyama Regional Railways to the JR platform.

As it turned out, we sighted the following service while we were waiting on the platform at Ouzu. 

Our Hayate service was running late.

Once we'd boarded, we retraced part of the previous day's route, then switched to a local service that delivered us into Nagano just after six. 

There was some confusion about the location of the hotel, which seemed to have changed names, but nothing major. 

By seven, we were booked in and back downstairs scoping out the eating options.

Given the number of options in the area and the lack of commitments, deciding on a particular eatery wasn't as easy as it might sound. 

In most other places along the way, there was either an obvious choice or some other factor that made things a done deal. But here we had some options, and it was down to what we felt like sampling. 

Madam had flashed through a couple of options on the iPad before we left. We'd decided the best option was a Japanese-Italian drinking place (drinks with nibbles), with some other possibilities as a fallback.

Complications set in when we found other options just down the road from the hotel, including a slice of meat on skewers barbeque operation and a pricey French restaurant. 

We pressed on, located the preferred option and discovered it was full except for a couple of places at the bar. That might have suited someone else, but didn't appeal to us.

Across the road, there was a Vietnamese place, where the menu in Japanese and unfamiliarity with the ins and outs of the cuisine meant we weren't sure, so we were off in search of others. 

Having recognised another fusion place from Madam's iPad info, we were about to head inside when Madam noticed the Closed - Private Function sign. So we ended up in another place that was, as far as she could make out, a young people's drinks and nibbles hangout. 

If that was the case, I found the all-Beatles soundtrack bemusing, to say the least.

What followed was a succession of little platters that added up to a substantial meal. Vietnamese style salmon and prawn spring rolls, pasta marinara, char siu pork finished off at the table with a blowtorch went down rather well with a couple of Suntory Premium Lagers.

We meandered back to the hotel, not quite replete, but definitely in a neighbouring postcode. For me, at least, it was a matter of another early night, followed by an early morning catching up on the Travelogue. 

Sunday, 4 November 2012

With the Travelogue backlog caught up, thanks to a couple of hours on the train the day before and a two-hour stint earlier in the morning Sunday's proceedings were rather straightforward.

We'd take a walk around the city in the morning, return to collect the Black Monster and head to the station for a train to Nagoya. From there, we were bound for Okayama, where we had an evening appointment with some combination of ramen noodles and tapas, though probably not in the same sitting.

The venue for the 1998 Winter Olympics, Nagano is surrounded by 3000-metre summits. 

A morning glance through the window revealed snowcapped peaks comfortably removed from the immediate vicinity. 

The Prefecture, of which Nagano is the capital, is known as the Roof of Japan. Since it lies between the Kanto and Kansai regions, local customs have been influenced by the cultures of both eastern and western Japan. 

As the regional capital, Nagano serves as the hub for the surrounding snow resorts, with handy road and rail links to most of Japan's major centres, including Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka. 

It's an hour and a half from Tokyo by Shinkansen on the Hokuriku Line, also known as the Nagano Shinkansen or Asama, a legacy of the Winter Olympics with two or three departures per hour from Tokyo Station.

There is also a scenic approach; the Wide View Shinano Limited Express runs hourly from Nagoya, a three-hour journey that takes you through the central cordillera. 

It follows a route that's almost as stunningly scenic as the line from Toyama to Nagoya via Takayama and was a highlight of our 2008 trip. 

If you're heading to Nagano from anywhere in western Japan, and Kyoto or Osaka in particular, it's the best option, with one caveat. 

The Shinano is notorious for running late and had us scurrying to get to the right platform when we arrived in Nagoya. 

If you're headed into Nagano and planning to spend the night there, of course, difficulty making connections won't be an issue.

Originally built around a Buddhist temple that’s the largest wooden building in eastern Japan, Nagano attracts over a million tourists every year. They are drawn to snow resorts, golf courses, a variety of sights and natural hot springs found throughout the mountain areas. 

Nagano is also noted for a variety of culinary products including soba noodles, apples and saké, oyaki dumplings, gohei mochi snacks and bamboo leaf-wrapped sasa-zushi.

Founded in the seventh century, Zenkoji is one of the most famous temples in Japan. While it sees a stream of visitors, the most significant feature of the temple is only shown to the public for a couple of weeks every six years. 

Zenkoji houses the first statue brought into Japan when Buddhism arrived in the sixth century. 

The original is hidden away permanently and what will be on display again in 2015 is a replica.

You approach Zenkoji (or at least we did) along a street lined with shops that sell local specialities and souvenirs, passing through a couple of gates along the way. 

The outer Niomon Gate has a pair of impressive Deva Guardians, which protect the temple from enemies of Buddhism. The Sanmon Gate dates back to 1750 and offers views of the temple and its approaches from the second storey.

The main hall, rebuilt in 1707, contains several significant statues. If you pay a fee, you can enter the inner chamber, view the altar, and descend into a basement where a pitch-dark passage holds the key to paradise, attached to a wall. 

It’s believed to grant salvation to those who touch it.

Had I done my research before we set out I would have visited Yawataya Isogoro, just outside Zenkoji's main gate. 

The 280-year-old store specialises in shichimi (seven flavours), a condiment made of ground chilli peppers, sesame, citrus, and other spices, and commonly sprinkled on soba noodle soup. 

But I didn't do the research, so my collection is one condiment poorer.

Predictably, the main item on the agenda before the rail leg to Okayama was a visit to the temple, an exercise that took us on an extended ramble past last night's dinner venue. 

It was a fair step from the hotel, but I was up for the exercise. Once we'd done the temple bit, there was the prospect of oyaki dumplings for brunch.

With the temple out of the way, and oyaki consumed (I opted for mushroom filling at the first place we tried, and mushroom with radish at the second) we diverted in search of croquettes to round off brunch. 

After that, we made our way back to the hotel through the back streets rather than retracing the route we'd followed on the outward journey.

Once we’d reclaimed the Black Monster and made it to the station, since we were at the point of departure, that give us a ten-minute window before the Shinano Express started moving. I used the time to keep working on Travelogue material. 

That brought a sharp rebuke once we started off and the iPad was slotted into the backpack, and the iPod provided the soundtrack. 

At first, it was a case of reasonably broad plains filled with the regular signs of economic and agricultural activity backed on both sides by majestic snowcapped mountains. 

Then, as the train climbed into the foothills, things closed in on either side as we travelled through deep forest-clad gorges. Rocky riverbeds were the order of the day and slopes that were closer to the vertical than the horizontal showed an impressive array of autumn leaves. There was, however, one issue that means this leg is underrepresented in the photographic record. 

We were on the left-hand side of a service that departed at midday on a line where the western sun seemed to remain in a relatively steady position. It was a source of continuing annoyance and prevented significant photographic action. Things got so bad towards the end of the journey that we were forced to draw the curtains.

Fortunately, the views on the other side were magnificent, and the glare issues ruled out typing. So there was nothing for it but to sit back and enjoy two and a half hours of superb scenery. 

For a fair section of the last bit, across the plain into Nagoya, we pondered a potentially tricky situation. This train was running six minutes late, and our connection was due to leave ten minutes after this one's scheduled arrival.

An announcement over the P.A. System advised us to speak to the conductor, which, of course, we duly did. One suspected the usually on time almost to the second service wasn’t going to be kept waiting to allow a couple of stragglers to make the connection. 

The Shinano is a regular train, rather than a Shinkansen. 

That meant we alighted, found our way off that platform and then had to find our way onto the relevant platform. That, of course, was in another section of the station. So we moved at a fair clip down an escalator, along a passageway and up another escalator to find...

Miracle of miracles, a Shinkansen was just coming to a halt, easing into the station just in time for us to board. 

The train we boarded was going to our overnight stop at Okayama, but we changed in Osaka, boarding a much more luxurious Sakura. That would get us there quicker than the train we'd just left, which was one of the stops at all stations variety.

The reasons for stopping where you do vary. 

We were in Okayama because of its location, which makes the city an important transportation hub. It’s where the Shinkansen line joins the only rail connection to Shikoku, which we were going to be visiting the following day, crossing the Seto-oteshi Bridge.

 Had that detail not been part of the equation we could well have continued to Hiroshima.

Okayama's most famous attraction is Korakuen, one of the best landscape gardens in Japan, along with Kanazawa's Kenrokuen and Mito's Kairakuen. 

The black Okayama Castle, located across from the garden, is another attraction, but the single item that dominates the city’s cultural environment is a fairy tale.

Momotaro delivered, I must admit, a certain degree of wry amusement, due to the coincidence of the mythical hero and a culinary delicacy of which I’m not too enamoured. 

In the fairy tale, an elderly childless couple finds a peach floating down a river. When the couple investigates further, it contains a baby boy. As is invariably the case in such instances, the couple adopts the child, and given the circumstances in which he was found, name him Momotaro (Peach Boy). 

The fully grown Peach Boy, announces his determination to rid the neighbourhood of the demons from Onigashima (Demon Island), who’ve been terrorising the villagers. 

He’ll need something to fuel his quest, so his aged adoptive mother makes kibi-dango (sweet millet-flour dumplings) to take on the journey. 

He’ll also need allies, which he finds in the form of a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant. 

He enlists the trio to the cause by bribing them with the kibi-dango.

Predictably, the demons are defeated; their treasure makes the old couple rich, and everyone lived happily ever after. 

Okayama’s main street, predictably, is Momotarō-Odōri, or Peach Boy Street.

I’m thinking of writing my version of the story, the adventures of Frock-Star, the rum ball boy.

The plain on which the city is located produces rice, eggplant, and Chinese chives and the uplands behind the city produce grapes and (surprise, surprise) white peaches. 

Proximity to the Seto Inland Sea contributes to several of the area’s signature dishes, including the takeaway matsuri-zushi (sushi rice with vinegar, egg and seafood), sold in a peach-shaped box. 

Other specialities include mamakari, which resemble herring and sawara, a fish whose name is rendered into English as trout or horse mackerel.

And, of course, there’s always kibi-dango.

Which explains why we ended up at a Spanish tapas place that adjoined the hotel.

Monday, 5 November 2012 

At this point, after ten days hauling the Black Monster up and down staircases, in and out of elevators, on and off different trains worrying about somewhere to stow it, we bid farewell to the encumbrance.

It's presence had, up to this point on the trip, been inevitable. 

We had a week on the road, heading into the cold country, with no idea how much warm clothing was going to constitute enough. There was also a degree of caution as far as wet weather was concerned.

Having passed Kōbe the day before we were back in territory where it was theoretically going to be warmer. So it made sense to take the cold weather gear and despatch it, along with everything else deemed surplus to requirements, off to The Mother's place.

Despatching that material requires a container. Since the Black Monster is the only one on hand that's big enough it's a case of Bye Bye Monster, see you on the final day. 

That's when we'll be re-sorting the possessions and loading Madam's suitcase with Japanese comestibles and reading matter.

There's a certain amount of economic sense in the matter.

Over the next two days, we'd have been looking to stow the Monster in a coin locker at ¥600/day, thank you very much. 

At an anticipated cost of ¥1600 to ship it back to Kōbe, we're actually ahead if a third day in a coin locker turned out to be necessary.

As it turned out, we ended up with change out of ¥1500, so we were slightly further ahead. A quick squiz at the coin lockers at Okayama Station suggested the Monster may have been too wide to fit in.

Of course, having made that decision and bundled things up, Madam checked the weather and found what looks like an extremely nasty cold front heading in our direction. It had just killed two Japanese tourists on the Great Wall of China.

The day's agenda, this time, involves a train ride over the Seto-Ohashi Bridge to Shikoku, followed by a couple of hours in Okayama. Then we head down through Hiroshima to an overnight stop on the doorstep of Miyajima, so we're back in history and geography lesson time again.

Officially they refer to the Seto-Ohashi Bridge, but there are six bridges spanning five islands connecting Kojima on Honshu with Sakaide in Shikoku's Kagawa Prefecture. 

Built between 1978 and 1988, the thirteen-kilometre stretch connecting Hitsuishijima, Iwagurojima, Wasajima, Yoshima and Mitsugojima in the Seto Inland Sea and the larger islands on either side operates on two levels.

The upper level carries the Seto-Chuo Expressway with two lanes of traffic in each direction. The JR Seto-Ohashi Line and a lesser road share the lower level, and there’s room to accommodate a Shinkansen line in each direction. Of the six bridges, three are suspension bridges, two are oblique suspension bridges, and there’s one truss bridge.

The statistics associated with the ten-year US$ 7 billion project are impressive. 

The construction needed over three and a half million cubic metres of concrete, and almost three-quarters of a million tonnes of steel before the bridge opened on 10 April 1988. 

Today, the bridge is one of three routes connecting Honshū and Shikoku, though it’s the only way to get to Shikoku by rail.

Having breakfasted and handed over the Monster it was time to light out for the station, where we were booked into the prime seats on the train that crosses the bridge, but that was a one-way arrangement. 

In an economy where space is at a premium and efficiency is prized, Japanese trains can be driven from either end. 

They arrive at the terminus, the driver changes ends, and they're set to go on the return journey.

The same thing operates on local services in Australia. But we still, from what I can gather, do the old switcheroo bit with something like the Sunlander, taking the locomotive down to the other end of the train for the return journey.

The astute observer will note Shinkansen invariably have a power unit at either end and, more often than not, one more somewhere in the middle. That explains why Car 1 is always at that end of the train, regardless of the actual direction of travel. 

If you're in the right place at the turn around point, you'll see something more interesting.

We all like to travel looking in the direction we're going, don't we?

So what happens when it's turnaround time for the Shinkansen? Well, you have the seats turned to face the new direction, don't you?

These factors hadn't registered until I sat down to ponder the return journey across the bridge. 

We'd been told there was no point in holding the same seats for the return journey because they'd be looking backwards.

Until the train pulled in, I'd thought we'd be in some sightseeing bubble, up above the body of the train. That meant, when you look at it that way, the preceding bit makes a certain amount of sense. 

We got to the platform just as the train arrived, disgorging the regular crowd of salarymen and office workers. Once the flood had passed, we set off to find our seats, which were tucked away just behind the driver's compartment at the very front of the train.

There are four seats, tagged 1 A, B, C and D. One assumes there's a similar compartment at the other end of the train where the seat labels start with a 2. 

They are, by the way, the only reserved seats on the train.

A word to the wise, if you're looking to make the bridge trip. 

Japanese engine drivers sit in consoles on the left-hand side. 

If you're in 1 A or B on the outward leg, your panoramic view to the front will feature the back of the driver's head. 

Presumably, the same thing applies to C and D on the way back.

In any case, with a clear view to the front and the south, and a pretty clear view to the left we set off. We started with a sharpish left hand turn out of the station, heading off through the usual edge of a large Japanese city landscape.

That’s a mix of residential blocks, light industry and scattered paddy fields. 

You'll find something similar all across the country, with rice paddies gradually gaining the upper hand as you head away from the city.

The eager bridge-crosser will, of course, scan the horizon for signs of bridges, which are singularly lacking for the early part of the journey. 

Then you hit a series of tunnels, predictably expecting you'll emerge from this one with a sight of the sea, and, hopefully, a bridge.

You don't sight the water until Kojima, the last station before Shikoku, and still comfortably short of the bridge itself.

Given the weather conditions, we were expecting to be a tad disappointed. But as we made our way onto the first bridge, it was apparent we were getting a magnificent sight on a less than optimal day. 

While the spectacle could have been better, everything was, under the circumstances, slightly more than merely satisfactory.

The research I'd done suggested a series of bridges. The material was careful to enumerate and identify half a dozen components, more than likely (I theorised) touching down on intervening islands before launching off and upwards onto the next. 

That might be the way we'd approach these matters in Australia or elsewhere. But the Japanese like big statements when it comes to things like technology and engineering, so the components merge into a contiguous whole.

A couple of times on the way across you'll register the presence of an island as you pass. There's one spot where you can see trees around eye level, but apart from that, there's no way to tell where one of the component bridges ends, and the next begins.

And it wouldn't be a good idea to try. 

Looking down to identify starts and finishes will draw attention away from a view that was, even on a day when conditions were less than optimal, magnificent. 

It had me pencilling in a return trip in the future, hopefully with better weather conditions and more than likely as part of a more extended exploration of Shikoku.

Assuming there's a rail pass involved) we'd get two bites of the cherry a couple of days apart.

Once we'd crossed and alighted at Sakaide, there was a twenty-minute wait before we headed back on a common or garden commuter train. Not that it diminished the view in too many ways.

Back in Okayama, the big question was what to do for the next couple of hours. 

My preference was to head for Okayama Korakuen, rated as one of the three best traditional landscape gardens in Japan alongside Kenrokuen in Kanazawa and Kairakuen in Mito. That option would give us an excellent sight of nearby Okayama Castle.

Bearing the weather, and particularly the threat of rain, in mind, Madam was inclined to opt for the nearby town of Kurashiki. So we set off for the Tourist Information Centre in the station complex to check whether there were further options and sort out the issue. 

The woman we spoke to was reasonably insistent. Korakuen was the way to go. A glance at the leaflet about Kurashiki suggested we'd be spending a bit of time in the open there, so there wasn't a great deal of advantage in that direction.

Forced to make a choice I went for the garden and the castle rather than the neighbouring town.

After all, if things got too bad, we could always retreat to the station complex.

Outside, it was umbrellas up, and choose between a walk or a tram down the main street. Motomaro-Ōdōri is named after the city's legendary Peach Boy, a character who'd been the subject of some discussion on the preceding day or two.

Given the weather, you could easily have opted for the tram, based on the fact that you'd get there quicker and wouldn't be walking through the drizzling mizzle.

As it turned out, that was the way to go. 

We arrived at the point where garden and castle were both visible as the sun threatened to break through the clouds. 

Although the umbrellas were unfurled for most of the next hour and a half, the weather was better than you’d have expected when you've started out with a forecast of rain developing. 

With the weather looking like it might be starting to clear we paused long enough to gather the evidence we'd been there.

Widely known as Crow Castle (Ujō), the castle acquired the nickname from its black exterior. 

Japanese castles, like the nearby Himejijō, tend to be white. 

Completed in 1597 in the style of the Azuchi-Momoyama Period, the castle was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1945. It was replicated in concrete in 1966 (except for a single turret that survived the bombing). The reconstruction is much more accurate than most Japanese replicas since it was done from the original blueprints.

The castle houses a museum documenting the history and development of the castle. That might have sounded like a handy wet weather venue, but I knew English explanations of the contents were few and far between.

With the evidence gathered, we headed across a bridge that took us to the south gate of Korakuen. We paused to consider whether to use that entrance and then headed for the main entrance, which turned out to be much further around than we'd thought.

The admission charge is ¥400, but Madam had picked up a leaflet at the tourist information place that delivered a twenty per cent discount. 

That, coincidentally, was the reduction offered to groups. 

I'm not sure that a duo counts as a group within the meaning of the act, but there you go.

We'd only just made our way inside and were considering the right direction to head in when we were approached by a woman canvassing for candidates for something or other. 

I suspected a tea ceremony and was attempting a polite "thanks, but no thanks" when she turned to Madam.

I suspect if it had been a tea ceremony she’d have declined too. 

As it turned out, a group of enthusiasts were demonstrating a traditional game involving a fan and a target, and Madam was inclined to give it a go. 

The exercise aimed to project an open fan, so it knocks over a target on top of a stand. 

They tried to get me involved as well, but experience with tatami mats in Unazuki suggested there'd be issues with the posture. 

I politely declined, using dodgy knees as an excuse.

Outside, Madam said she had enjoyed the exercise, so that was fine. We spent the next little while in a clockwise stroll, snapping away and admiring an extensive garden that is, as you'd expect, spectacular, but in a rather understated manner.

Korakuen was constructed on the feudal lord, Ikeda Tsunamasa’s orders with the work carried out between 1687 and 1700. 

Of course, there have been changes over three centuries. But the garden is still much the way it was in the days when it was a venue to entertain the ruling family and receive distinguished guests.

Korakuen wasn’t the original name. It was initially called Koen (later garden) since it was built after the nearby castle.

Since it was built in the spirit of senyukoraku, the name changed to Korakuen in 1871.

Senyukoraku, for the uninitiated,  is a Confucian tenet: "grieve earlier than others, enjoy later than others". Basically, a ruler must attend to his subjects' needs first and only then attend to his own.

The garden is in the Chisan Kaiyu (scenic promenade around a large pond) style. Visitors are presented with a new view at every turn of the path that connects lawns, ponds, hills, tea houses, and streams. 

The garden suffered flood damage in 1934 and was bombed during World War Two, but was restored to its original state thanks to accurate records kept by the designers, Edo Period paintings and Ikeda family records and documents.

It’s spacious with a hill that serves as a lookout point. 

Unlike most gardens of this type, it has extensive lawns (18,500 out of an area of 133,000 square metres), groves of plum, cherry and maple trees, tea and rice fields, as well as an archery range and a crane aviary.

Having taken our time strolling through the gardens, we wandered back out the main entrance, crossed the bridge and looped back to the nearest tram stop. A tram back to the station seemed like the way to go since we hadn't booked seats for the next leg to Hiroshima. 

Time in these matters is of the essence, and efficiency of movement a key factor. So we headed back to the hotel, grabbed the luggage, and arrived at the station to find the reserved seats on the train we'd planned to catch had all been sold.

That might seem like a hassle, but there was a Kodama about to depart. That's an eight-car Shinkansen where six cars are non-reserved seats. 

We dived downstairs, snaffled a couple of seats in a mostly empty Car Seven and arrived in Hiroshima a good hour earlier than planned.

Having been caught once, the first move when we arrived was to set in concrete the remaining unbooked sectors, and it was lucky we did. 

The final leg, a long haul from Kagoshima back to Osaka couldn't provide adjoining seats, so we had to settle for either side of the aisle. 

That's a timely reminder that window seats are highly prized, not so much for the view as the presence of an outlet to recharge your laptop, iPad or whatever.

In any case, more than likely those window seats won't both be occupied for the entire duration of the haul from Kagoshima to Osaka.

With those details looked after we headed for the local line that would take us two stations past the ferry port that delivers passengers to the next day's destination, Miyajima. We alighted at Onoura, where a courtesy bus was waiting to transport us to the onsen hotel where we were spending the night.

I don't know how I formed the impression, but I was expecting a boutique operation, possibly something with a handful of rooms. I was slightly alarmed to sight a tour bus in the car park.

Given the Japanese passion for communal hot bathing, I had visions of a packed hot water tub, full of purist connoisseurs of the onsen experience. 

That's likely to prove rather intimidatory to the average overweight and out of condition Westerner who's not totally up to speed on the correct rituals and protocols when it comes to mass bathing. 

But I'll return to that point in a minute.

As it turned out, and as I should have figured, given the proximity of a prime venue for flag bearer-led tour parties,  although the bus was there, the tour party was elsewhere.

The empty buses would shortly head off to collect the party from the pier.

After we checked in, we were shown to our room by a young girl who took Hughesy's backpack and the Little Red Travelling bag. That would have left me to look after Madam's backpack, and the arrangement was definitely inequitable.

I tried to change the arrangements, but she was determined to do her duty, even though we'd arrived with more luggage than the average Japanese tourist.

We were shown into our room, which had ta very similar layout to the one in Unazuki. There were tatami mats on the floor, a table in the middle, two cushions to sit on and a section near the window with a table and two Western chairs, fridge et cetera.

The alcove at the entry provided just enough space to take off the shoes, spaces to stow them, room for minimal luggage and the toilet facility. The latter included the regulation Washlet, a critical ingredient in keeping the onsen waters clear of claggy matter.

The Washlet is the device that sprays water on your hindquarters in a strategic manner after you've evacuated the bowel area.

In any case, Madam's inquiries had revealed the onsen was unlikely to be heavily occupied until around five, and it was just after four. So I headed off immediately to the enjoyable experience that I wasn't altogether looking forward to.

When I got there, the place was deserted, so I doffed the gear and went through the regulation pre-immersion cleansing procedures. 

I probably carried them out to an extent that might be labelled as obsessional to a casual Japanese onlooker. After that, I spent a good ten minutes soaking luxuriously in a large tub looking out towards the island we were headed to in the morning.

So far, so good.

Clambering out of the bath, I moved back into the antechamber, where I dried off, and dressed. 

Then one of those intriguing issues of etiquette hit me. You arrive with two pieces of fabric, a towel and a washcloth that's a vital part of the cleansing procedure. 

There was a container containing a couple of used examples of each near the door. 

What to do? Leave my two there? Or carry them back to the room?

When in doubt, call. There was a handy phone, so I did and established that it was OK to carry the items back. I was almost out of the door when the first of the evening's bath enthusiasts entered.

There was free WiFi access in the Lobby, so that was where I headed shortly afterwards. I wanted to catch up on the email while she took her first extended turn in the onsen. 

From my seat in the lobby, I could see a steady stream of gentlemen headed for the male baths. There didn't seem to be any angry customers arriving at Reception with complaints about polluted bathwater...

We were booked in for a full Japanese banquet from seven o'clock. Much to my relief, the feast would be served in the room rather than in some more formal setting. So we were back upstairs around half an hour beforehand. At that point,  I discovered the Free WiFi wasn't limited to the Lobby. 

So I had something to keep me busy in the interim.

Around seven, a discreet tap on the door announced the arrival of the first instalment of dinner. It was laid out on the table and replenished twice as we moved through a staggering array of dishes and bits and pieces.

At this point, I should take a moment to consider the Hughsoid reaction to Japanese cuisine. 

I'm the first to admit that I’m not a big fan. The flavours tend to fall outside the parameters my palate is accustomed to, but that's just the first factor.

A very significant second factor lies in the fact that my palate doesn't do subtle. 

Strong on chilli, heavy on the garlic with concentrated flavours is the way I like it, and that's not the flavour profile you get with Japanese cuisine.

When you're looking at something like this display, however, the variety and contrast of the different flavours and textures work a lot better than an isolated serve of sashimi or sushi does. 

While I don't do (not enamoured of, would prefer not to sample and will go out of my way to avoid) sushi or sashimi, if it's served it in this context I'll have a go.

That's not to suggest, on the other hand, that I liked, or managed to finish everything on offer. 

There were a couple of things I tried but couldn't stomach. In any case, the cumulative quantity served up would have defeated anyone who wasn't an extremely dedicated trencherman.

And, unsurprisingly, having dined exceptionally well it wasn't long before I was doing the carpet snake who's just swallowed a wallaby and slunk off to sleep it off routine.

Tuesday, 6 November 2012

The first Tuesday in November 2012 will go down in history as the day Green Moon won the Melbourne Cup and Barack Obama was re-elected President of the United States. 

In my iconography, on the other hand, I mightn't remember the date, but I doubt I'll forget the experience of visiting Miyajima.

We were downstairs at seven looking for breakfast. Reception directed us to the third floor, where we found a table with our room number laid out with a variety of Japanese breakfast comestibles. I would have avoided most of them under other circumstances, such as a Viking breakfast layout.

Here, a variety of things I would have avoided under other circumstances worked off each other rather well. They did so in much the same way as the previous evening's banquet had done.

With breakfast out of the way, we were back upstairs packed and contacting the front desk to arrange a shuttle bus to Onoura station. The 8:37 train would deliver us to the ferry terminal at Miyajima Port just after nine.

What we found after we deposited the Little Red Travelling Bag and Madam's backpack in a coin locker was an example of the numbers drawn in by iconic Japanese heritage tourism sites.

The JR ferry we boarded wasn't quite packed to the gunwales but wasn't far off it, and the boats we saw headed across in the late afternoon were almost as crowded. 

With three ferries running across and back throughout the day that's an awful lot of people headed to a significant site on a day when there was nothing obvious (apart from autumn leaves) to draw them there.

Admittedly, a significant portion were high school students in excursion mode. Many of the remainder were elderly Japanese formed into largish tour groups. But it was still a relatively substantial number of travellers visiting the sacred island.

As the ferry neared the shore, there was a predictable movement of seated passengers towards the port side railings for a first glimpse of the famous torii. 

From what I could gather, the ferry's course would deliver a better and closer view on the starboard side. So that was where I was headed, determined to find the optimum viewing spot for the closest approach.

Needless to say, I was subsequently joined by most of those who had previously migrated to the port side railings, but, at least, this time, I had the premium viewing spot.

Once we'd docked, there was the inevitable exodus headed towards Itsukushima shrine, which lies right behind the torii. 

It had been low tide about half an hour before, and most of the stretch between the temple and the gate was not quite dry land. There was plenty of camera action going on from the headland and across the exposed beach, but we were headed elsewhere.

Miyajima means shrine-island, a reference to Itsukushima, a World Heritage Site. 

The image usually associated with the island is the shrine’s floating torii gate set in the Seto Inland Sea.

The red-lacquered complex of halls and pathways and the torii gate, built over water seem to float in the sea at high tide.

The buildings, the prayer hall, main hall and a Noh theatre are connected by boardwalks on stilts, built so commoners could visit without defiling the ground by walking on it. 

The arrangement is based on the idea that the island itself is sacred. As a result, the shrine represents the threshold between the sacred and the profane. 

Before mass tourism kicked in, commoners approached the shrine by water, steering their boats through the torii on their way in. 

Away from the boardwalks, paths take visitors around the inlet to the other shrines and temples, and to the island's highest peak, Mount Misen. 

The buildings have been destroyed and rebuilt many times. 

The current design dates back to 1168, when Taira no Kiyomori, the most powerful man in Japan at the end of the Heian Period, selected the island as the site for his clan's family shrine.

Retaining the purity of the shrine is essential, and since 1878, there have been no deaths or births near the shrine. Pregnant women are supposed to head to the mainland as their time approaches, as are terminally ill or the very elderly. Burials are still forbidden.

That was the origin of Itsukushima. 

The present shrine dates from the middle of the sixteenth century but follows the twelfth-century design. Near the main shrine a Noh theatre stage, built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the late sixteenth century, is used to honour the gods and act out key events in the mythic history of Shinto.

The torii and the view of the gate in front of Itsukushima with Mount Misen in the background is one of the Three Views of Japan (along with the sand bar Amanohashidate, in Kyoto Prefecture’s Miyazu Bay and Matsushima near Sendai). 

There has been a gate in place since the twelfth century. The current sixteen-metre high gate, which dates back to 1875, is built from decay-resistant camphor wood with an extra leg before and behind each pillar. 

It reflects the style of Ryōbu Shintō, a school of esoteric Japanese Buddhism associated with the Shingon sect.

Though the shrine and its torii float above the water at high tide, when the tide falls, the water drains out of the bay, and the torii can be approached on foot. 

Visitors take the opportunity to walk out, view the gate from close quarters, place coins in the cracks of the legs, make a wish and gather shellfish to add to their miso soup. 

That had been happening as our boat approached. 

Given the numbers involved in an era of mass tourism, you'd figure that shellfish would be few and far between these days

I'd done my research before departure and pencilled in a walk around the temple precinct. We'd start at Senjokaku temple, pass the Five-Storey Pagoda and a couple of lesser shrines, track around the mountainside Nature Walk, then loop back to the main temple area.

Madam was determined to make for Mount Misen via the ropeway. But the morning weather conditions made that idea a bit iffy, so we started with Senjokaku, where there were obvious preparations for something or other underway.

Senjokaku (Hall of One Thousand Tatami Mats) is the colloquial name for Toyokuni shrine, built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (one of the three unifiers of sixteenth-century Japan) in 1587 but left incomplete after his death. 

The nickname is an apt description of the most massive structure on Miyajima, which doesn't contain much apart from empty space.

A letter from Ankokuji Ekei, head monk of Ankokuji temple, says the intention was to build a library where the chanting of sutra would honour those killed and wounded in times of war. 

The structure was left unpainted. Since the year it was built is known, the weathering of its pillars and floorboards can help determine the age of other wooden structures on Miyajima. 

Senjokaku is, however, a slight exaggeration. 

The area of floor space is equal to 857 tatami mats.

From there, once we'd reclaimed the footwear we’d removed so we could enter the temple, we made our way past the Five-Storey Pagoda (Gojunoto). It was built in 1407 and restored in 1533 and enshrines the Buddha of Medicine and Buddhist saints Fugen and Monju. 

From there we headed into the back streets that took us past Zonkoji, Tokujuji and Shinkoji temples on the way to a road the map labelled the Nature Walk. 

Given the coloured leaves theme, it seemed the way to go.

It was evident that the further you went from the main tourist areas, the less crowded things became. By the time we hit the Nature Walk, we had things more or less to ourselves.

The ramble through the foothills was a contrast to the bustling conditions a few hundred metres away, and the foliage was definitely on the autumnal turn. That gave Madam a considerable degree of heartache since the sunlight's continually refused to play nicely and deliver optimal conditions for coloured leaves photography. 

When we reached the point where we needed to decide about the ropeway, we headed back into the crowd rather than up the mountain. 

Still, once we were back with the crowd, we tended to work away from the mob, heading for Daishoin rather than the main temple complex. 

Located five minutes’ walk from Itsukushima shrine at the foot of Mount Misen, Daishoin is one of the most famous temples of Shingon Buddhism.

Founded in 806 by the founder of the sect (Kūkai, known posthumously as Kobo Daishi), the temple was the first Buddhist shrine on Miyajima. 

It features a variety of buildings, statues and religious objects including the Kannondo Hall, the Maniden Hall, a sand mandala made by visiting monks from Tibet and a tea room. 

A cave filled with eighty icons represents the temples of the Shikoku Pilgrimage. There's also a flame said to have been burning since the temple was founded. 

From the temple grounds, a hiking trail leads to the summit of Mount Misen. Since the climb takes an hour and a half, that ruled it out as a serious possibility as far as Yours Truly was concerned.

In the middle of the steps leading into the temple, a row of spinning metal wheels inscribed with Buddhist sutra can be turned as you pass.

That is believed to have the same effect as reading the sutra. So, without any knowledge of Japanese, you can benefit from the blessings the reading of sutra is supposed to deliver without doing the reading. 

Given those considerations, I was giving the cylinders a good swirl on the way up.

Up to this point, the emphasis had been on staying away from crowds. We only made our way into the really congested area when the prospect of lunch came to the fore.

On the way across there'd been a notable abundance of oyster beds. Even if I hadn't been told oysters are a local speciality, I'd have been pencilling them in as a lunch option.

After ten days of Japanese specialities and try this you might like it, there was one thing I was definite about. 

I wanted oyster, the whole oyster and (almost) nothing but the oyster.

And I wouldn't be stopping at one.

We sighted an uncrowded restaurant when we hit the main temple area on the way back from Daishoin. I must admit I was inclined to stop there and get lunch out of the way. 

Madam, on the other hand, had sighted references to a couple of places that specialise in oysters. 

The problem was their location, bang in the middle of the bustling and almost overcrowded central shopping area. 

We passed one, noting a sizeable queue waiting to get in while oysters in the half shell were being grilled at the front of the eatery.

We came to a second, where there was also a queue, but a marginally shorter one. That, I decided, would do, and as it turned out, it did very nicely, thank you. 

Madam did her best to talk me into half a dozen in a variety of settings, but I was steadfast.

I went for four grilled on the half shell, with another three crumbed and deep-fried, along with a glass of Chablis.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the oysters I got were (a) huge and (b) bloody magnificent. 

Don't believe me? 

Here's the evidence.

With lunch out of the way, we were left balancing two options.

 Madam wanted to get to the top of Mount Misen, and we'd avoided Itsukushima earlier in the piece because of the low tide.

Since it was around one, with a good hour and a bit until high tide it seemed like the ropeway up to the top (well, not quite the actual top, but close to it) seemed like the way to go.

We made our way through the back streets to the point where you pre-purchase tickets. A glance at the crowd waiting for the courtesy bus suggested we wouldn't fit on the next one. In that case, there was no choice but to hoof it to the bottom station.

It's a ten-minute walk (seven, we were reminded along the way, if you run a bit). With the backpack, after the morning's uphill and down dale ramble, there wasn't going to be much running.

In any case, most of it is uphill, and most of the uphill involves stairs that aren't spaced to make them easy to climb when you've got my stride pattern.

Still, we seemed to have arrived at the base station before the courtesy bus. After we joined the queue, we eventually found ourselves in a gondola with four Japanese girls. Some of them, as Madam informed me later, weren't too good on heights.

Hughesy isn't particularly good on heights either. But that had nothing to do with having my back to the view for the ascent. 

When you're the last one in, you're not given much choice on where you sit.

Rope ways don't handle curves, and subsequently, need to work in straight lines. So there's a station three hundred and fifty metres up a fairly steeply pitched slope where you change for the next stage. That involves larger gondolas with the majority of passengers standing up.

With my back to the view, I hadn't been able to see much. For the first section, I'd tried to turn around and admire a view that had everyone else marvelling, but the girth made rotating the trunk difficult. 

Those considerations didn't apply to the second stage, which travels above the ridge that leads to the summit. 

The view on the other side of the ridge to the Seto Inland Sea was breathtaking.

Earlier, Madam had been talking about the circuit of the summit, where there are several temples and places of interest.

Mt. Misen's ascetic status as a holy mountain site dates back to the autumn of 806. 

The sites around the summit add another dimension to the panoramic views across the Inland Sea, though we weren't going to be visiting them this time around.

A return visit without the lengthy ramble around the Nature Walk would probably allow us to get around the Seven Wonders of Misen. They include the Eternal Fire (Kiezuno Reikado), said to have been burning for over 1,160 years and believed to be capable of curing all illnesses. 

It was used to light the Flame of Peace in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

As stated, Madam was keen to go the extra forty minutes or so that would have taken us around the summit. Given the state of both pairs of legs, she decided to give that a miss. 

After a photo session around the observatory at the ropeway station, we made our way back down, well and truly in time to catch Itsukushima at close to the best tidal conditions.

We didn't, however, get there in a hurry. 

The way up had taken us through Momijidani Park, with a striking contrast as the red of the maples shows up against the deep green of the surrounding evergreen forest. 

We'd been intent on getting to the base station before the courtesy bus on the way up. On the descent, with the urgency out of the equation, I dawdled as Madam took her time snapping away.

Back at the main shrine, we found ourselves sharing the space with some school groups and a multitude of mainly Japanese visitors. I was mildly bemused by the reaction to the No Photographs sign where you pay your admission. 

Less than five metres from that point a bunch of high school boys were blithely ignoring the message, but a glance further on revealed the flouting of instructions wasn't a generational thing.

Everyone else was doing it, so we did it too, figuring the No Photographs applied to the people in the ticket booths.

They were about the only thing that wasn't being photographed.

I limited my shots to the torii, and the general shape of the building, avoiding anything that might be sacred. 

It seemed like a common-sense compromise.

From there, we could have continued around the bay to other temples and points of interest. But the feet were aching, the muscles at the back of the legs had had enough, and the crowds were getting to me. 

When Madam suggested we head back to the mainland and move on to Hiroshima, there weren't going to be too many objections.

We'd been on one of the earlier ferries in the morning. With three separate services operating from Miyajima Port and a fourth bringing passengers from Hiroshima, the flow of visitors had probably continued unabated through the day. 

By mid-afternoon, many visitors were thinking of heading in the other direction. So the ferries making the return trip were always going to be crowded.

I pondered crowd-related matters as we stood at the end of a lengthy queue and watched another flow of incoming visitors leaving the vessel we were about to board. Another ferry carrying a considerable contingent coming in to dock, 

I realised that the flood of visitors might rise and fall through the day. From the first service in the morning until the last one in the evening, a steady stream of visitors flows in. 

People arriving towards the end are presumably booked into one of the island’s ryokan or onsen or are there for the sunset.

Day visitors, on the other hand, are going to want to stay as long as possible and leave with enough time to reach their evening destination before dinner time

So, regardless of how crowded the boat was on the way over, it will be packed on the way back.

We're not talking absolutely packed. 

Not to the extent you see in news footage from Bangladesh or Indonesia, where images of crowded ferries crop up in news bulletins. They usually appear in the wake of some disaster involving severely overcrowded vessels. 

It's a situation where, assuming the capacity of the ferry involved is 1250 passengers, they won't stop admissions to the vessel before 1249 and won't allow it to reach 1251.

I had momentary visions of the capacity limit being reached as Madam was allowed aboard with Yours Truly left for the following service, but we both passed the checkpoint and headed aboard. 

Madam wanted to take a few more photos, so I found a seat as she headed upstairs. There was one spare beside me, but it was gone by the time she made her way downstairs.

Back on the mainland, with the Little Red Travelling Bag retrieved from the coin locker, we headed across to the platform we'd arrived on. A commuter train would deliver us back into Hiroshima a good twenty-six or seven hours after we'd arrived.

That got us into the station complex, and a shortish walk delivered us to the Hotel Urbain Executive, where we were spending the night. 

Don't be deceived by the title, though. It might have been Urbain, rather than Urbane, but it was another in the string of places we'd stopped that cater to the travelling salaryman trade.

But it had one significant difference from the standard version.

Once you left the security of the lift that brought you to your designated floor, you were in the open air. It was remarkably crisp, fresh and breezy open-air as we made our way to the room. 

It was a multi-storey version of the standard motel. The units were warped around a central space in a more or less triangular manner with open space looking down into the lobby where the car parks would have been.

Such establishments offer a variety of enticements to attract the business trade. In this case, the variants included free drinks (of the non-alcoholic variety, of course), for guests only, downstairs and a free laundry rather than the standard coin laundry. 

A load of washing needed attention, so that solved the issue nicely. But the fact that Madam was outdoors as soon as she left the warmth of the room meant she won't be booking us in there again.

With the laundry done and dusted, we headed off to dinner. 

Madam was determined to sample one of Hiroshima's trademark dishes and steered us past some other possibilities into the station complex. 

We found her preferred option was packed, and it's cousin brother further down the corridor was the same with a few more thrown in for good measure.

I wasn't over keen on what I saw as we'd gone past the first time. But if The Tour Director has set her mind on one particular format for dinner experience suggests it's futile to resist.

We inquired about a table for two and ended up with space at a bar at the rear of the premises/ It was right beside (actually, left beside from the seated point of view) the cash register.

So if what follows appears to be a little jaundiced, consider my situation.

Having spent the day doing a lot of walking, much of it involving stairs and sloping paths, I was leg-weary but not overly hungry. 

The lunchtime oysters had left room in the stomach, but not enough to require a significant refill. 

I was seated in a crowded eatery on a stool that had my knees uncomfortably close to the eating surface. 

Every thirty seconds or so something said to my immediate left had me automatically turning my head in that direction. That, coincidentally, was the one from which the food would be coming), and I wasn't keen on what I'd seen in preparation.

The meal, when it arrived, turned out to be a sort of pancake turned into a parcel containing noodles and whatever theme ingredient (beef, chicken, pork, tofu or, in this case, oysters) the diner chooses.

 It came with a healthy serve of a variant on soy sauce that is apparently widely enjoyed in Japan but has minimal appeal as far as Hughesy is concerned.

Madam suggested if I didn't like the sauce, I should try a bit of this hotter variety, adding some to the platter. I chose not to respond since the response would have contained variations on the desire to get the sauce out of the dish rather than adding any more.

The addition was a Chilli enhanced variation on the other one. 

The same flavour profile, but more heat.

And the oysters were small, with the taste overpowered by the sauce.

There were places where we could stop for a drink on the way back, but I'd had enough. 

We passed two wine bars where the offerings seemed to be aimed at the segment of the market that was disinclined to spend and was after-effect rather than taste.

While I could have weakened, I want to drink something interesting in the wine department.

If I can't, there's always beer. But in this case, I wasn't inclined that way either.

Wednesday, 7 November 2012

Mention the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshū and capital of Hiroshima Prefecture and the first thing that springs to mind happened at a quarter past eight on the morning of 6 August 1945.

And so it should. 

Because when American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the bomb, they’d nicknamed Little Boy it didn’t just kill around eighty thousand people directly. 

That figure rose to somewhere between ninety and one hundred and forty thousand as the effects of injury and radiation took their toll. The blast changed the world forever and made the world a terrifying place for the next quarter of a century or so.

We weren’t as concerned about these matters as the end of the twentieth century rolled around, with the Cold War a distant memory.

 But for a small boy who went to bed each night while the Cuban Missile Crisis and surrounding events saw Soviet Russia and the United States engaged in nuclear brinkmanship, the possibility of a global repetition of what happened that morning was terrifying.

It’s not as if I wanted to visit the city, but if the opportunity arose, I had to. 

Here’s where it happened, here’s where things changed, and we have to ensure that this never happens again. 

The spectre of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a significant factor in the mindset that shaped the culture of the fifties and early sixties.

But Hiroshima has a long pre-atom bomb history and presents a remarkable story of recovery and hope for the future.

Provided, of course, we don’t allow it to happen again.

The name means Wide Island and Hiroshima was founded on the delta of the Ota River, in 1589. 

Warlord Mori Terumoto made it his capital after leaving Aki Province, built Hiroshima Castle and moved there in 1593. 

He was on the losing side in the Battle of Sekigahara, the beginning of the Tokugawa Shōgunate. 

Tokugawa Ieyasu gave control of the area to the Asano clan of samurai, who ruled the area until the Meiji Restoration. Under their rule, the city prospered and expanded. 

Their descendants were strong supporters of modernisation through the Meiji Period, 

Hiroshima became an industrial centre and a busy port as the Japanese economy shifted from predominantly rural to urban and industrial.

The Sanyo Railway reached Hiroshima in 1894, and the city was a major military centre during the First Sino-Japanese War with the Japanese government temporarily based there. 

Emperor Meiji made his headquarters at Hiroshima Castle from 15 September 1894 to 27 April 1895, and the first round of peace talks to end the war was held in Hiroshima in early February 1895. 

Hiroshima was a significant supply base during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. Just over ten years later, the city was a focal point of military activity when the Japanese government entered the First World War on the Allied side. 

The Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall, constructed in 1915 as a centre for trade and the display of new products was the closest surviving building to the atomic detonation, designated the Genbaku or Atomic Dome, as part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

The city was a significant military base again during World War Two, with large depots of military supplies, and was a key hub for shipping. While there was widespread destruction in Tokyo and other cities, there had been no air raids on Hiroshima. 

Students aged eleven to fourteen had been demolishing houses and creating firebreaks to protect against potential firebombings, but no air raids.

Until 6 August 1945.

Just over a month after the bombing, the Makurazaki Typhoon (Typhoon Ida) killed and injured more people, destroyed more than half the remaining bridges in the city and added further massive damage to roads and railroads. 

Hiroshima was rebuilt with help from the national government that provided financial assistance and land donated previously used for military purposes.

There, in a nutshell, you have the Hiroshima story. 

When you walk (or, in our case, travel by tram) through the downtown area on your way to the Atomic Dome, you see a remarkable recovery. It's proof that, if such an event were to happen again, on a small scale, and at the same intensity of the blast, recovery might be possible.

On the other hand, as a guide addressing a tour group ten metres to my left pointed out, today's nuclear weapons are much larger and infinitely more powerful. 

There's a mist over my eyes as I type this, reflecting on a small boy living in dread that Hiroshima was about to be repeated on a worldwide scale. 

But it's a place that needs to be visited, an event that needs to be remembered. The mid-city environment has been shaped to deliver serenity and quiet dignity that's impressive given the awful magnitude of the tragedy it commemorates.

We could have made our way into the Peace Museum, but chose to stroll through the parkland, reflecting on events. I was trying not to think about events on the other side of the world that will shape the way things go for the next four years.

We had a booking on the 10:51 Sakura 549 service. That could have taken us all the way to the day's eventual destination in Kagoshima if we hadn't decided to break the journey in Kumamoto. 

We were going to take a walk around the Castle there, and as it turned out, it was just as well we hadn't opted to visit the Peace Museum.

Other places could also have been worth a visit on a less crowded schedule. 

Just north of the city, Fudoin temple on the east bank of the Ota River is one of the few structures in the area to survive the atomic blast. The Kondo (Main Hall) is the only designated national treasure in Hiroshima City. 

It seems the Kondo was initially built in Suo Province and moved to the present site. Statues of the Buddha of healing and medicine suggest there was a temple on the site by the end of the Heian Period. 

The Kondo is the largest remaining structure in the Kara style, brought from China in the Kamakura era along with Zen Buddhism. It boasts beams spanning 7.3 metres and 5.5 metres and irimoya (a combination of gable and hip roof) with mokoshi (an additional roof). 

Inside, the dedication suggests Fudoin was built around 1540.

We could also have visited Shukkeien garden (literally, shrunken-scenery garden), which dates back to 1620, was started after the completion of Hiroshima Castle. 

It features a miniature representation of a variety of natural formations and scenic views, depicting valleys, mountains, and forests. Tea houses around the central pond offer visitors views of the surrounding scenery and a path around the pond passes through all of Shukkeien's miniature scenes. 

It would probably have been an ideal place to destress after the atomic bomb sites, but we had other fish to fry down Kagoshima way

We made our way back to the station and hoofed it back to the hotel, where the checkout time was a very convenient eleven o'clock. After we'd collected the backpacks and the Little Red Travelling Bag and made our way back to catch the train we had all of five minutes to spare before departure.

Onboard and underway, I was tempted to leave the tapping and enjoy the scenery since we were on the left-hand side, and there were issues with solar glare coming into play. 

But numerous tunnels made sightseeing difficult. By the time we'd passed through the intermediate stops and had hit the tunnel that takes the Shinkansen line onto Kyushu, I was well and truly in tap it out mode.

Once we'd made our way through Hakata, however, I was inclined to sit back and enjoy the scenery.

Out of the urban sprawl at the top of the island, it tended towards forest-clad ridges with the odd bit of residential and farming activity in the valleys. There was not much of anything in the steep-sided gorges.

We tend to think of Japan as a highly urbanised country, a teeming ants nest kind of place where they employ people to pack passengers into overcrowded commuter trains. 

But 73% of the land is mountainous and relatively safe from urban development. And 70% is forest. 

In fact, natural, as opposed to planted, forests account for 50% of the country's surface area). 

Madam and I had spent much of the preceding week and a half working our way around that sort of landscape in the Deep North, the relatively recently colonised Hokkaidō and the mountainous centre of the country around Nagano. I'd expected Kyushu, being in the south and relatively warmer would have been reasonably closely settled.

The Shinkansen line, of course, is going to avoid, or go over, urban areas, so the bullet train corridor might well be seen as the exception to the rule. 

Our experience the following day, however (he wrote, two days after the events) suggested forested ridges are the rule rather than the exception in the centre of the southern part of the island.

The original plan had been to conclude the day's travels at Kumamoto, move on from there through the back blocks to Kagoshima on Thursday and do the big leg back to Osaka on the last day of the two-week rail pass. 

But some complication ruled that one out and Plan B had a three and three-quarter hour stop in Kumamoto before we moved on to Kagoshima.

The primary purpose of the stop was to look at Kumamoto Castle. Although only a few structures date back to the castle's construction in 1607, the reconstructed castle is one of the most impressive in Japan, rated alongside the white-walled Himeji and black-walled Matsumoto. 

With around eight hundred cherry trees, the castle is a popular sakura venue in late March and early April each year. Although the keep and most other buildings are reconstructions, the work is high quality, and new buildings are continually being added.

Building the castle, which was designed and supervised by Kato Kiyomasa, the daimyō who ruled the area, took seven years following the Battle of Sekigahara. However, its foundations date back to 1467. 

Kato had been awarded what was known as Higo Province for service to Tokugawa Ieyasu. The castle was part of efforts to unify and develop the region. 

Kato built fortifications that were highly regarded for their defensive capabilities. Castles he designed in Korea during the Imjin War were able to repel much larger forces because of their practical design. 

Kumamoto Castle was considered almost impregnable hanks to its defensive features, with curved stone walls and wooden overhangs incorporated in the design as protection against the ninja. 

Fifty years after it was completed the castle and surrounding area were given to the Hosokawa clan who ruled the Kumamoto region for the next two centuries. 

Following the Meiji Restoration (1868), the castle played a pivotal role when Saigō Takamori led the Satsuma Rebellion against the new government. Kumamoto was the main government garrison in Kyushu, and Saigō attacked the castle in 1877. 

Despite being outnumbered, the government forces were able to withstand a two-month siege, forcing the rebel forces to retreat. 

The original castle keep burnt down just before the siege. 

A 1960 reconstruction re-created the exterior, and a recreation of the Honmaru Goten Palace opened to the public to celebrate the castle's 400th anniversary in 2008. They’ve gone to great lengths to use authentic materials and methods. The result looks like an accurate recreation of the opulent rooms in which the daimyō would receive guests.

I’m not a fan of reconstructions, but when they’re done this well…

Apart from the walk through the interior rebuilding, a highly choreographed samurai show, designed to keep the younger set happy, meant a pretty good time was had by all.

The city’s other attraction is Suizenji Koen, a landscape garden built in 1636 by Hosokawa Tadatoshi, the second lord of Kumamoto, as a private retreat. 

A network of gardens spans an area of sixty-five hectares that reproduces fifty-three post stations of the Tokaido Road, which connected Edo with Kyoto during the Edo Period, in miniature form.

Three and a quarter hours with most of them spent exploring the Castle ruled out a visit to the Garden this time around. But ongoing reconstruction at the Castle and the prospect of a walk through that landscape is the sort of thing that could well draw us back to Kumamoto.

Back on the Shinkansen, it was an hour and three-quarters to Kagoshima. The accommodation was further from the station than I would have preferred if we were still lugging the Black Monster.

With the Little Red Travelling Bag in hand, we found our way to the tram stop. We alighted three stops later to head off into the eating and drinking quarter in search of the Sunn Days Inn. It lay right in the heart of the quarter, a prime destination for the hungry and thirsty salaryman.

Having checked in, we were out again in reasonably short order looking for a particular venue that deals in one of Kagoshima's specialities, black pork. 

Previous stops, having been reasonably close to the station concerned, had mostly been away from prime eating and drinking areas. When we'd ventured into such territory, we were headed for a place where Madam had, more or less, a fair idea of the place's location.

We found ourselves wandering along a backstreet, down another, then onto one of the city's major thoroughfares, and back a block before we located the place she was seeking. 

Given the fact that this was, apparently, a highly rated purveyor of prime pork you'd expect it to have been a bit easier to find. 

Tucked away at the back of a basement on the edge of the Eating Quarter you'd have expected it to be doing things a little tough. But while we were there a steady stream of customers made their way through the door. 

Not bad, one would have thought, relatively early on a Wednesday night.

We ended up in a tatami mat cubicle, at the chef's suggestion, rather than seated at the bar.

I was glad we did since we'd ordered the prime version of the pork, which was cut thicker and took longer to cook. I downed a substantial pitcher of beer while we were waiting. I wanted another with the meal, but the request was overruled by the wait staff. The meal was substantial, and I wouldn't be able to manage both.

We'd learnt of Obama's re-election in the States on the last leg of the train trip, and I was in a mood to celebrate. I was confident that I could, but Madam advised caution and the avoidance of scenes. 

So we had to do with the meal, which mightn't have been the largest I've ever tackled but was certainly in the running for the top five. 

A substantial piece of high-quality pork had been crumbed and deep-fried, sliced into significant chunks and came on a platter with a generous serve of sliced cabbage, slices of cucumber, a bowl of rice and the seemingly obligatory miso soup. 

I'm not miso-friendly, so that was never going to enter calculations, but I made pretty good work of the pork and my serve of rice. 

Around a third of the way through,  the chef visited to demonstrate the correct way of seasoning the pork. 

He started with a healthy sprinkling of sauce that wasn't too dissimilar to the one I'd disliked the night before and had been avoiding to date. He then added a fair-sized dollop of hot English mustard, which I had been indulging in, though not in the recommended quantity. 

The combination worked rather well. By the time my serve of pork and rice were gone, there was only a skerrick of the mustard left. That was a problem when Madam advised she'd been beaten by quantity.

There was about a third of her serve left, and a fair quantity of rice which the chef had described as a high-quality product from Akita Prefecture in northern Honshū. 

Under those circumstances, I felt obliged to finish both pork and rice. But there was no way I was going to manage the cabbage and still leave room for a celebratory ale or two.

Having completed the repast Madam wasn't inclined to hang around for pitchers of beer/ Who could blame her? She didn't have the capacity to join in the celebrations.

We wended our way back to the hotel and turned on the TV in search of updates on the Obama situation. We found we were at the end of the relevant bulletin and settled back to watch a panel discussion about dieting as I downed a couple of Asahis to celebrate the result.

Predictably, by around nine-thirty the sawmill was in full production.

Thursday, 8 November 2012

At least three times during the night, I lay half asleep, trying to work out what that noise was. 

It certainly sounded like rain, a possibility I dismissed as absurd first time around. 

When it reappeared, with some emergency vehicle passing by, siren engaged, I considered the possibility a little further.

We're on the thirteenth floor (out of fourteen) and on a corner of a rectangular building, so perhaps rain, driven by a strong wind might account for it. 

The trouble was, there was no sound of the wind.

On the third, or possibly fourth or fifth occasion, the penny dropped. It was the air conditioner.

On other days, with walking around as a significant part of the plan, rain would have been a problem. 

Given the morning's schedule, a rail-based loop through southern Kyushu with an interval of three minutes between trains at the last changeover, the rain wasn't likely to be too much of an issue.

The loop should bring us back into Kagoshima around a quarter to one. That would give us the afternoon and most of the following morning to take a look around the Naples of the Eastern world.

A bayside location, an impressive stratovolcano (Sakurajima, Kagoshima's equivalent of Vesuvius) and a mild climate that’s mostly related to a position as Kyushu's southernmost major city combine to deliver that moniker. 

It’s the capital of the local prefecture and its largest city by a fair distance.

On the southern tip of Kyushu, Kagoshima Prefecture stretches around six hundred kilometres, as far as the boundary with the neighbouring Okinawa Prefecture in the Ryūkyū Islands. 

Its territory takes in Yakushima Island, a World Natural Heritage Site, the twelve Tokara Islands and Amamioshima, the second-largest isolated island in Japan.

Dating back to the fourteenth century. Kagoshima sits on the Satsuma Peninsula, facing Kagoshima Bay. 

As the political and commercial centre of territory controlled by the Shimazu clan of samurai through medieval times into the Edo Period, it was the capital of the Satsuma Domain, one of the wealthiest and most powerful fiefdoms. 

Although international trade was banned for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the city remained prosperous. It served as a link to the semi-independent vassal kingdom of Ryūkyū, whose traders and emissaries frequented the city. 

Kagoshima had also been a significant centre of Christian activity before the religion was banned in the late sixteenth century.

The Royal Navy bombarded Kagoshima in 1863 after the daimyō refused to pay an indemnity for the murder of Charles Lennox Richardson on the Tōkaidō highway the previous year. The city was the birthplace and last stand of Saigō Takamori at the end of the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877. 

More significantly in the long term, nineteen young men from Satsuma broke the Tokugawa Shōgun’s ban on foreign travel. They travelled to England and the United States to study science and technology, on an adventure that did much to kickstart Japan's industrial revolution. 

There’s a statue outside the train station paying tribute to them.

Kagoshima was also the birthplace of Tōgō Heihachirō whose role as Chief Admiral of the Grand Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Russo-Japanese War produced startling victories in 1904 and 1905. The victories destroyed Russian naval power in the East and contributed to the failed 1905 revolution in Russia.

The city’s status as a significant naval base and position as a railway terminus saw a mass bombing raid on the night of 17 June 1945.  Over eight hundred tonnes of incendiary and cluster bombs destroyed over forty per cent of the built-up area. 

Today, Kagoshima produces a wealth of agricultural and marine products, is home to sophisticated electronic technologies and is the only prefecture with a rocket launching facility. 

In March 2004, the city became the southern end of the Shinkansen network, with services terminating at Kagoshima-Chuō. 

Recent upgrades mean Kagoshima is eighty minutes from Fukuoka (Hakata if you want to split hairs).

 It’s around two and a quarter hours to Hiroshima, just under three and a half to Okayama, and just over four to Osaka in the heartland of the Kansai region. Kagoshima is between seven and eight hours to Tokyo, depending on the particular service you choose to use. 

To get that far, you’d be using a combination of the Tokaido, San'yo and Kyushu Shinkansen lines, so there are a variety of permutations and combinations. 

There isn’t a single service that runs straight through.

The day's travel proceedings involved, in Madam's words, a big train day. Given our location at the very end of the Shinkansen network, you might question how that was possible. 

The answer to your question, of course, involved local lines. 

I knew this was the case, but nothing in the lead up suggested anything much out of the ordinary.

If I had been a bit more thorough in my research, I might have known I was in for something unique.

We started by partially retracing our steps on the Shinkansen network and alighted at Shin-Yatsushiro. 

Even Madam, who'd planned the day's route and only had us doing this leg since it would deliver us to Hitoyoshi, was gobsmacked by what came next.

It wasn't, by all admissions, the most promising of starts. 

We alighted at ShinYatsushiro and made our way from the Shinkansen section to the much more prosaic surroundings of the local line. The first train that appeared was a local stopping at all stations conveyance that was as run down as you might suspect under the circumstances.

We weren't quite in the back blocks, being on the main Shinkansen line, but if you were bound for the boondocks, this was the train that would get you there.

And it certainly looked the part.

When the Trans-Kyushu Express, arrived it was only a cut or two above its predecessor. 

Once we looped under the Shinkansen line and headed into the hills, you weren't inclined to pay much attention to your surroundings on the train. 

Your gaze is drawn to the passing landscape, forest-covered ranges with almost vertical slopes that towered above the train as it wound its way along a river valley.

It wasn't quite as spectacular as the ride between Toyama and Takayama and down to Nagoya or the run from Nagano down to Nagoya, but those are well known scenic routes. This one, a mere transitory stage before what was to come was, however, bloody magnificent.

We pulled into Hitoyoshi after an hour to find the next train waiting for us.

You don't take a heritage train, give it a full restoration and then run it through an ordinary setting that won't attract a clientele. 

This section of track, as was the case with the next one, was obviously being niche marketed as a trip for train freaks.

If the prelude was bloody magnificent, these next two stages were absolutely stunning. 

Given the niche marketing, there were stops guaranteed to maximise that appeal. 

The first was at a heritage station that came before a switchback. There was a loop up into the mountains and a second stop some five or six minutes later that had you looking back at the station you'd just visited.

I stayed on board for that one, but The Photographer, as you'd expect, didn't. 

Her report, once back on board, had Hughesy alighting at every subsequent stop. 

One was at a place where the name translates as Eternal Happiness. You struck a bell a certain number of times according to your relative degree of absolute contentment. 

One for happy, two for very happy, three for verging on the ecstatic. 

Another stop was the oldest station in Kyushu, though how that works when you're in the uplands in the centre of the island didn't quite compute.

There was a stop at Yatake, which dates back to 1909. 

An impressive locomotive was stabled in a largish shed beside a stall selling fresh produce (Madam invested in some freshly dried mushrooms).

In front of the locomotive, a hostess was holding a train driver's cap and a board bearing the date, a handy combo for photographic purposes, and offering to take the photo for you. 

There was a fair bit of that sort of silliness along the way, and it was difficult to abstain.

On a more serious note, the track was following the route that brought the first trains to Kagoshima. 

There had been a fair bit of logging and land clearing along the route.

In recently cleared areas there seemed to be a significant spread of invasive vines, creepers and other weeds that made the foreground, on frequent occasions along the journey, an eyesore.

Whether forests will eventually return and overrun the invaders is, of course, one of those only time will tell scenarios. 

When the weeds took over the foreground, of course, the natural response was to lift up the eyes to the magnificent backdrop.

That stage took us from 10:08 to 11:21. I'd been expecting some difficulty when we got to Yoshimatsu, but it was apparent the next train wasn't going anywhere until the connection was made.

The next stage, from 11:24 to 12:48, was on a similarly restored rail motor, though the interior decor was, as you'd expect, slightly different. There were a couple of stops at seemingly out of the way onsen to pick up passengers.

Eventually, as we found ourselves approaching Kagoshima, the focus shifted to Sakurajima, the volcano that is to Kagoshima what Vesuvius is to Naples. 

Conditions throughout the day had been hazy. The view across the water wasn't the greatest, but the sight had camera enthusiasts snapping away. Hughesy was happy to leave the snapping to those who had a fair idea of what they were doing.

Back at Kagoshima-chuo, I was satisfied with the day's activities and would have been quite happy to head back to the hotel. 

But Madam was determined to get a couple of scenic shots across the bay to Sakurajima, so we headed off on one of the bus services that offer a scenic loop around the city.

I suppose we could have got on and off around the circuit. The first stop commemorated St Francis Xavier, but there wasn't much of interest once we dismissed Senganen garden as a possibility.

We’d passed the garden on the train as we headed along the coast just north of Kagoshima. We were probably doing ourselves out of a significant spectacle since the garden’s most striking feature is its use of Sakurajima and Kagoshima Bay as borrowed scenery. 

But by this point on the trip, we were in scenic sensory overload.

Senganen dates back to1658 and owes its existence to the Shimazu clan, who ruled Satsuma and were early adopters of Western science and technology. 

Their influence can be seen in the long stone building that stands just outside the main garden area. 

It was one of the earliest Western factories in the country and now houses a museum with exhibits about the Shimizu and the early stages of Japan's nineteenth-century modernisation.

As far as Madam was concerned Shiroyama Observatory at the summit of Mount Shiroyama would do us very nicely, thank you. I wasn’t inclined to dissent. The mountain was the site of a castle and Shiroyama means castle mountain. 

The castle's ruins at the base of the mountain are now the site of the Reimeikan Museum. They were one of the stops we skipped on the way up to the Observatory.

Shiroyama Observatory is famed for views across the city of Kagoshima, the bay and Sakurajima. 

In fine weather with good visibility, you can see as far as the Kirishima Mountains. But the haze that had been a nuisance in the distance all day really made its presence felt, and there wasn't a great deal of joy for the photographic fraternity.

The park at the Observatory is of interest to students of Japanese history. It was the site of the last battle in the Satsuma Rebellion. 

Saigō Takamori made his last stand at Saigō's Cave, another site we passed by on the way up.

A couple of bus services will take you around the sights of Kagoshima but opted to head back to the hotel. 

This travel bit can tend to become wearing.

Dinner that night was in a French establishment on the other side of the main road from the previous night’s pork emporium, and rather impressive it was. 

That’ll have to do as far as the narrative is concerned. Hughesy, for some reason, missed completing this particular bit of Travelogue promptly. Now, close to a month later, the details have vanished from the memory.

Friday, 9 November 2012

The last day of the two-week rail leg dawned a little later than my regular waking hour.

It was around six thirty-two when I surfaced from a slightly weird dream. It involved catering for wedding receptions while obviously working as a primary school teacher.

Back in the waking world, I resumed work on the Travelogue. 

Madam surfaced shortly after that, announcing an intention to hie herself off to the nearby public onsen. 

That delivered close to an hour's uninterrupted tapping until her return shortly after eight.

With the train scheduled to depart at 11:32, we weren't inclined to do much in the way of pre-departure activity. We were happy to wander downstairs for a late breakfast, head back to the room to finish packing and check out just before ten. 

That scenario gave us a leisurely move to the station and a bit of looking around before departure time.

The day before we'd headed down for breakfast just after six-thirty, and found the place close to chocker. 

Madam's trip to the onsen started with an elevator ride that stopped at almost every floor. Salarymen and other guests seemed to be out to indulge in the ¥500 breakfast that seemed to be the Sunn Days Inn gimmick to attract the business clientele.

If it is, then it seems to work. When Madam headed to the elevator to take her back upstairs, the breakfast room had progressed to the point where there wasn't an actual queue. But a waiting list had the next prospective breakfaster being called by name.

On that basis, my decision to tap away rather than hurl myself at the shower once she was gone more than half an hour was a smart move. 

We only had one room card key, and I needed it to keep the lights and electricity running. I wouldn't be able to hear someone knocking at the door while I was in the shower, would I?

In any case, a leisurely morning was the order of the day, and I lobbed myself gently towards the shower rather than hurling myself into the Rain Room. 

Breakfast on both days was a good deal for a mere ¥500. You could see why most of the occupants of the hotel's three hundred and fifty rooms would be inclined to eat there.

Still, it was relatively uncrowded when we made our way downstairs, hit the breakfast options and wandered back up. On the way, we passed an impressive display of bottles associated with one of Kagoshima’s other claims to fame, the sweet potato shōchū (imo-jochu). 

Typically distilled from barley, sweet potatoes, or rice, though it can be made from brown sugar, buckwheat, sesame and chestnut, shōchū is an entirely different beast to saké. But if you're in Kagoshima and ask for the latter, you'll almost certainly be served shōchū instead. 

There are, by all accounts, hundreds of brands, and a fair few were represented in the display.

Kagoshima is the only prefecture that doesn't brew any saké, and the spirit dates back to at least the mid-16th century. 

It seems to have been introduced to the country through Kagoshima from China or Korea. 

The earliest reference to shōchū appears in temple graffiti written by a carpenter in 1559. It seems the abbot at the particular shrine was less forthcoming with the spirit than his workers would have liked.

Madam had intentions of sampling the local product, but she hadn't managed to do it over the last day and a half. 

With plenty of time till the train left, she could still have fitted a taste in, right up to the time we boarded the train. The Shinkansen platforms at Kagoshima-chuo have bars offering more than a hundred varieties. 

Instead, having made our way over to Kagoshima-chuo, I set off in search of a statue. It commemorates the fifteen young men from Satsuma who broke the Tokugawa Shōgun’s ban on foreign travel. Thet then travelled to England and the United States to study science and technology.

The adventure helped kickstart Japan's industrial revolution. 

I’d spotted the item in question while Madam was scoping out transport options between the station and the hotel, then promptly forgot all about it the following day. Now, with the best part of an hour left till the train departed looking for it was a decent way of killing time.

Had I done a headcount I’d probably have found only fifteen there, though the party included a recruit from Tosa and another from Nagasaki. 

Apparently, a couple of supervisors went along for the ride as well. 

They studied at University College London, and many went on to Oxford and Cambridge before they returned home. 

Among their number was Mori Arinori, the first Japanese ambassador to the USA and, subsequently, Minister for Education, Godai Tomoatsu (founder of the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and the Osaka Stock Exchange) and Terashima Munenori, who went on to become the country’s Foreign Minister.

With that done there was still time to kill, so we loitered around the station’s shopping precinct, noting a rather interesting poster advertising a newspaper. Then Madam set off to perambulate through the local delicacies on sale to the travelling public. 

As stated elsewhere, this kind of thing is an essential consideration in a gift-giving culture, and she didn’t return empty-handed. 

Once she’d made her way back with a selection of goodies I took a turn around the same area. Somehow, I managed to arrive in the Shōchū store, though they didn’t seem to be offering samples.

Aboard the train, we were seated on either side of the aisle rather than in contiguous seats. Coincidentally, that meant we didn’t have access to the handy electrical socket that comes with said seats. 

I’d been hoping to be able to access the powerpoint en route since I figured there’d be a turnover of seats. While next door was vacant when I boarded it was occupied at the first stop by a bloke who appeared to be an academic rather than a salaryman.

When he got off in Okayama, the seat was immediately claimed by another dude who remained aboard until Kōbe.

Still, although it ran down the batteries on the iPad and the iPod, I was able to tap away and listen to my personal playlist, so the four hours passed remarkably quickly.

Arriving in Osaka the contrast with where we'd been was noticeable. 

It was more than noticeable; it almost amounted to a fair-sized clout around the ears. 

There'd been plenty of room to move in Kagoshima-chuo, and the Shinkansen is a reasonably peaceful means of transfer. But once we'd grabbed the Little Red Travelling Bag and made our way to the door, two steps later we were in the ant bed turmoil of ShinOsaka. 

Fortunately, there was a mere one-stop train ride and a single stop subway transfer to get us to the night's hotel. So we had an opportunity to catch the breath before the evening's appointment with the inimitable Diamond Chef.

That started with a visit to an establishment that delivered a range of little platters that went rather well with beer, and a visit to a jazz club.  Madam found the featured vocalist was an alumnus of her old university. 

From there, we were on to a single malt club, and things start to become blurry.