Day 5

After 4 hours of sleep we got up at the crack of dawn and packed for a day of travelling to Kagoshima (one of the southern most cities in Kyushu), approximately an eight hour trip by train. We made our way to Tokyo central and caught the Hikari 503 Shinkansen (bullet train) to shin-osaka. My first bullet train! It was pretty sweet. The Hikari was 16 carriages long, with each carriage having a length of about 20 long strides. All the connecting carriages have motion-sensing automatic doors and a step under the seats allows for a full 180 degree rotation (so that four seats can face together). While not luxurious, the whole set up feels like a solid, clean, and well thought out operation.

On the train a relentlessly cheery lady parades the carriages selling drinks and handing out booklets. The staff of the Japanese railway service must take pride in their work to perform it so well, and are in many ways more akin to aircraft cabin crew than English railway staff. Station masters have immaculate formal attire, complete with flat topped caps and white gloves. The female staff on board wear waistcoats and neckerchiefs or cravates, and bow towards the customers when leaving a carriage. The train even plays a lullaby before announcing the station name as the train draws close to a platform, somewhat more melodic than the two tone announcements at heathrow.

There does seem to be a strong sexual typecasting for occupational roles, however. I have yet to see a single man serving drinks on a train, and of the dozens of station masters i have encountered there has been but a single woman. I shall keep an eye out to see if this trend continues.

After a couple of stations a pair of Geishas (or Geikos, I'm not sure) boarded and dragged their luggage along the carriage. While such sights are interesting, I have a limited capacity for surprise and I am finding myself incrementally less shocked, though not dismissive, of such strangeness. "Yesterday we saw a Sumo wrestler on the metro, so, yeah, whatever" (we really did!).

Anyway I mostly tried to sleep through the journey, but we saw Fujiyama (Mt. Fuji) on the way and Ed got some good photos.

A shot of Fujiyama from the Hikari shinkansen

 We disembarked at shin-Osaka (from the station it looked kind of industrialised) and boarded the sakura 553 for the remainder of our journey. By 3pm we arrived at Kagoshima. We finally got some glorious sunshine and the cool sea breeze in this city is very satisfying.

Kagoshima is a slightly strange city. Extremely trendy in some quarters and industrial in others, while at the same time almost pretending to be a tourist location. The latter, however, it is clearly not. After checking in at our hotel, the 'Tokyu Inn' (wherein no staff speak more than a few words of english) and dropping our bags off in our smokey room, we set off to explore the city. After visiting some minor relics relating to the samurai Saigo Takamori we stopped to watch a teenager and an elderly gentleman practicing martial arts in the park (I did not recognise the style, but it was not dissimilar to wing chun). While watching, we were ambushed by an old gentleman who ran over to us and began talking English with us (I sometimes get the impression that it's a bit of a novelty). The gentleman had excellent command of English and used idioms such as "a stone's throw away". He talked to us about local history, Australian and American accents, American movies (the flatterer said I look like a 'gangster', and that Ed looks like he's from a romance), and anything else that struck his fancy. He was an incredibly animated individual that gestured, pulled faces, and nearly danced his sentences out. Then out of nowhere he suddenly stood bolt upright with his arms by his sides, as if saluting, and said "Thank you very much for speaking with me in English, I apologise for wasting your time.". He then shook our hands and ran away. What an eccentric and delightful gentleman.

We spent the rest of the day getting to grips with the city of Kagoshima. We took the 'street car' (a tram) to the sea front first and caught an eyeful of the great Sakurajima. The volcano looks exactly how you'd expect a volcano to look (minus the lava), but there is an incredibly strange sensation watching it. It fills the width of your vision from kilometers away and is enormous by any standards, but somehow my brain cannot comprehend how truly huge it is. Something in the back of my brain is convinced that it's really just a little bit bigger than the apartment block in front of me, even though I know that to be a patent lie!

Looking around for dinner we began to notice that most places were closed (maybe because it's "Kodomo no Hi" 'children's day'). Anyway I did manage to find an awesome takoyaki joint and had the best prawn and octopus takoyaki ever! it tasted so much less artificial than the ones I had in Tokyo. The batter was perfect, and the bonito flakes were nice and tangy!

Takoyaki. Okay, I guess this photo doesn't look that appetising, but I promise they're great!

Ed has decided that he doesn't like takoyaki (baka!) and found a 'lotteria', which is basically a wimpy, and got a chicken & egg burger.

Afterwards we went on a bit of a mission toward Ito beach. We got most of the way there but were distracted by a stunning night time view of Sakurajima with moon overhead and the ferries to-ing and fro-ing. Unfortunately the cameras were still on charge, so hopefully there'll be a beautiful shot of this image in tomorrow's blog if we can get it!

Sorry for the boring update what with all the travelling, but tomorrow promises much with the plan to do some hiking on Sakurajima! By way of apology, please enjoy these BONUS SHASHIN! Arigato gozaimashita!

mmm.... Green tea flavoured wotsits (pofak to you persians out there (you know who you are!))

Don't hang your clothes up here. We have trained a pigeon to crap on them.

For they are weak and you are mighty!