Taking the train from Fukuoka to Kitakyushu to climb Sarakurasan
Another day, another planned rest day, another day where I got 'lost' and somehow crossed over numerous mountains after finding a path that no one else seems to know exists. Therefore, another excellent day!.
I planned to go into the outskirts of Kitakyushu, about an hour by train from Fukuoka, climb up the city mountain of Sarakurasan, gawk at the view for a while, trot back down, have a relaxed lunch, return to my hotel and rest my poor old legs.
It all went too well, the hike to the top of the mountain was challenging and picturesque despite numerous paths being destroyed by natural disaster. Once I was at the top I spotted maps and signs and chatted with an old Japanese man, then I decided... why not follow a random path and see where it goes? I could see two more peaks from peak number one, and I think I hit both of them, but my path was a long lonely awesome one that as you will see finally came out very far from anywhere.
About 25km later I arrived back at a station a few miles from where I originally planned to be.
Maybe my time in Nagasaki will be restful? The weather apparently will still be great the whole time I am there also. Too many pics, lets get going.
First I had to walk from my hotel to Hakata station, this went past a large shrine, time for a shrine photo by the light of the dawn.
It is still about 20 degrees during the day, but only 10 degrees when I depart at dawn. I refuse to carry a jumper all day so I freeze for a while. Not today, I found a long tunnel that went all the way to the station. Good times.
Ahh, the Fukuoka marathon is indeed on today. That explains why I saw a few competitors with their arms and legs wrapped in plastic doing weird pre race ritualistic stretches and chanting. I have no idea what the plastic is for.
What the hell happened to this train? did it travel through a volcanic eruption and get pounded by falling boulders?
I got off the train at Yahata station, just a couple before the main Kitakyushu station of Kokura. It was quite a nice area.
Here we have todays kittens. The black one is very entertained with his piece of newspaper.
The streets to the hiking trail, which is also the bottom cable car station, are surprisingly steep and narrow. It was already quite an effort to get up here.
I found this awesome rusting Karmann Ghia in a secluded car park with a great view.
The rusting classic car had this view to enjoy.
Next I saw a staircase, I assumed it would meet up with a road. It went past this shrine and into a cemetery, but there was a fence around the whole thing to keep the zombies contained. I had to backtrack.
Eventually I found a way across the freeway. Already quite far up the hill at this point.
God damn it Japan! Another busted path. Get your act together. Thankfully there are many paths up this small mountain.
There goes the cable car. Pfffffttt, there is absolutely no fun in that. I mooned everyone on it.
The replacement trail I found was dark and mysterious, there were however other people at this point. Still it was steep and fun.
A brief clearing reveals the distance remaining to the top. Great light today when the pollution wasnt ruining it.
Now we will appreciate the view of the smog from the top in a series of indistinguishable photos. I have done what I can to clean them up, but that is a layer of smog, it is not cloud!
So much smog. This area of Japan is very industrial.
The view over the many mountains is great, but look at all that farmers burn off smoke... I hate that.
The antennas and North Korean nuclear missile monitoring equipment is particularly invasive on this peak.
Have a bit more pollution smog.
Apparently if you are very lazy you change cable cars halfway up, just to make sure you dont walk at all. I noted everyone on board has hiking gear. Well done.
Kitakyushu and Fukuoka basically join up to form a 100km long city.
This view inspired me to find a path along the peaks rather than heading straight back down. I was very glad I did. A Japanese man had about 200 questions for me at this point. Was he a government agent?
The path to this peak was easy enough. Here you can see the towers from the first peak, from where I had come from. My descriptions are very matter of fact today.
Some time later down a very lonely path which at times was so steep they had to add black and yellow rope, I found this lone red tree.
I seem to have left all that city behind somehow and ended up in the middle of nowhere. I was scrolling google maps making sure I would eventually hit a road, any road.
This was the only sign along the path. What they are I have no idea. Framed glass covered documents explaining something. Probably not to enter due to bear traps, pig hunting, land mines.
I think I am approaching a road! Hooray!
Ahhh, a shrine, the road must be coming up soon.
And sure enough, I soon found a road, a gate and a big red tree. Photo ruined by inconsiderate people that parked their car and scooter here rather than in the huge empty carpark behind where I am standing.
I came out in this awesome rural valley. Thankfully I found a vending machine. I chose not to carry water today as I knew the top of the mountains was very developed. I did not expect to take such a long detour!
Work time! Heres the schedule for which days you leave which bags of which garbage to be collected. Garbage, plastic containers and bags, cans and bottles, garbage. Looks like the garbage collectors dont work Fridays.
A view of the peaks I crossed. Squint and look at the top left, thats the big towers on the top of the first peak from earlier in the day.
If you are viewing the full trip report style of this website you can also click the picture for a larger version.
The road back to the station became a nice elevated path surrounded by URBAN PINE FOREST, not the coastal pine forest from yesterday, but an urban pine forest. I suspect it used to be a railway track.
I was a bit early for the next train, so there was time to take a few photos of the station area. This is like a city in itself, very modern, Kurosaki.
I loved todays 'easy' mountains, so I took another photo from the station. They are further away than that, I cropped this photo.
The main covered shopping street of Kurosaki is all but abandoned on a Sunday afternoon.
Still slightly too early for the train, I had time to appreciate this robot arm playing with a ball on a mini railway. I think the robotics company is based in Kurosaki.
I highly recommend going to Kitakyushu and getting lost on Sarakurasan!
Eating soup and looking at flowers in Fukuoka at night
No ramen tonight, time to get some health into me. Actually I have been eating broccoli and toast for breakfast, as my hotel comes with breakfast. Nearly everything on offer for breakfast has been in a fryer or is sausage related, which leaves broccoli and toast. Even the other breakfast salad options appear to be floating in cream based salad dressing. Anyway, enough about my breakfast, now for my dinner!
As I mentioned in Tokyo when I went to Roppongi and had a clone of Tokyo Soup Stock, I like Tokyo Soup Stock. So now that I am not in Tokyo, I had Tokyo Soup Stock, in Fukuoka. Perhaps when I got back to Tokyo I will have Tokyo Soup Stock in Tokyo, which is bound to send their stocks soaring, they are listed on the Tokyo stock exchange.
Anyway, as always I had the two soup combo as you shall see.
I also did a last lap of Fukuoka, taking in both Hakata, Tenjin and all the shrines in between. I will probably do another last lap tomorrow morning before taking the 2 hour train ride to Nagasaki.
Not many pics tonight!
Such truth in advertising!
Here we have the first of many shrines this evening, I did not photograph them all. The sky is still a little bit blue.
This streets shop owners association voted to approve a local illumination. This is what they got. 3 pieces of mildly illuminated plastic. Merry Christmas.
Its my dinner as mentioned above. One of the soups is minestrone, the other I am not sure of, but it has mushrooms and I do not think its miso.
Here we have the ever mysterious multi level car parking building. You hand your car over to some dude who then arranges for it to be swallowed by a giant machine. They then get shuffled around inside its metal stomach for hours before you hand in your ticket and it gets regurgitated out again.
Another darkened shrine. This one was a Shinto Shrine, I saw a sign. No one really knows what Shinto is, an excuse to hold expensive real estate in Japanese cities.
The department stores of Tenjin. Fukuoka seems to have very wide spacious streets compared to most other areas of Japan.
This restaurant had a lot of steam and or smoke coming out of it, fogging up the neon. I decided it was a good photo to mess about with for a while to keep myself entertained.
If you are looking for some weekend work, there are plenty of job openings in the move this pole holding a sign from side to side while screaming your lungs out on a street corner business.
Its the final YATAI! I tried to go to one for dinner last night, but they all seemed to only be selling skewers of meat. Not really a meal in my opinion, more something you eat before or after being drunk. Anyway, they make for good photos, I get to include people in my photos without causing great offence. I dont care if I cause offence. People should stop being offended.
And tonights final photo, some flowers! There are flowers everywhere here, all up and down the streets, in the shops, in the tunnels, on the trains. My hotel room also has some potted color.
Taking the train from Fukuoka to Nagasaki
Now I am in Nagasaki. It is very grey. It did not rain much, it just stayed grey, hence Greyasaki.
They appear to have built this city precariously on the side of steep hills, ready to slide into the harbour any minute now. I will climb these hills, there are not really any accessible mountains nearby that I know of, so multiple hills per day it shall be.
Now for SNOTAGEDDON!
I boarded my limited express train in Fukuoka, and at first I thought it was going to be great. Plush leather seats and a wooden parquetry floor (made of plastic). We set off right on time of course.
The train started swaying side to side violently, and continued to do so for the entire trip! Too much to stand up without hanging on. I would suspect it to be the tracks if it were just a small section, but it was the entire journey. Was the train faulty? Was it that battered train I saw yesterday?
Anyway, thats not the worst part. After 1 stop, 10 minutes into my journey, a salaryman got on. This is my only snot story of this trip (so far), there have been others but I have shown restraint. He set up his fold down tray with a mirror and a wash cloth and started extracting snot from his nose and creating a small snot pyramid on his wash cloth. Eventually his finger was no longer doing the job, so he produced a plastic toothpick thing with a tiny spoon on the end of it and really got to work. After each drilling operation he peered deeper into his nose with his magnifying mirror. It looked to me like he had gone in far enough to be hitting brain.
Crap pictures today!
Before heading to my train there was plenty of time for a damp lap of Fukuoka to take in the site of damp colorful leaves with the damp grey backdrop of a damp Fukuoka.
I headed down to the docks. This blue thing is the floating protective barrier of a mini speedboat racing stadium! The stadium seating section appears to be huge. This requires more investigation. Think of it as an oval shaped speedway track, but for speedboats. I never saw such a thing before.
The harbour points to Busan in South Korea. Its not too far. You have to pay attention or a few Koreans will sneak in.
The dock area was filthy, with rubbish everywhere and long grass in the park. They still have a shrine though.
There is a small mall with duty free shops for Koreans being deported. They have a giant aquarium in there.
Korea watchtower.
These guys are responsible for fishing out anyone who got drunk and fell in the previous evening.
I did not pre purchase a train ticket, so when I got to the station I just bought the next available. An hour wait. Time enough to wander around and take photos of the station, thrilling stuff!
Bizarrely, Japan Mcdonalds has decided to team up with the Freddie Mercury movie. With a cardboard piano and poster promotion. I wouldnt have thought Freddies life was compatible with the Mcdonalds image. Also, those are my bags!
Ahh, the inside of the luxury swaying to the point of derailing snot express.
Here she is after arriving in Nagasaki. The JR station is a bit away from the main part of town, which was fine as I was too early to check in. Time for a stroll in the drizzle.
My hotel is everyones favourite business motel chain, Dormy Inn.
It is right across from Chinatown. I see Chinese food in my future. It looks like they will have this lit up very well. In Japan the nicest parts of cities are the Chinatowns.
The other side of my motel is the start of the large covered shopping street. This one is still quite vibrant, although that could just be because like me, everyone was avoiding the rain.
The view from my motel window is great. I shall go up to the top of each hill that surrounds the city.
And for the sake of completeness, my room. It is small just like all the others. Its basically the same as all the others. If you have seen one you have seen them all. If I dont post this I am sure I will get requests to post it.
Walking along the old Chinese streets of Nagasaki
Nagasaki is dark. As you shall see, my camera can see in the dark, so tonight I wandered around and took shots that make pitch black things slightly less than pitch black. I was very happy with my new found ability to see in the dark.
The Chinese area of Nagasaki, listed as the former Chinese quarter, still has a heap of little Chinese temples, old buildings, streets, cats.
Like everything in Nagasaki it extends up a hill, there will be a lot of hills while I am here. Lots of streets are not suitable for cars or even bikes as they just throw in a few random steps in the middle of the street due to the steepness. These are great for tumbling down in the dark.
I have also now studied the map a bit and realised that over the next 2 nights there are a couple of other centres of the city to explore. Basically follow a tram line and you get to what looks like a shopping and dining area.
Much like Hiroshima, they have old rattly trams here. Theses are a feature of cities that have had an atomic bomb dropped on them. I do seriously wonder if they are kept for that reason, I know in Hiroshima that the first thing running again after the bomb was the tram. Perhaps Nagasaki is the same, they are proud how fast they got the trams going again, so now they will have them forever.
And now, into darkness.
Just beyond the neon Chinatown, which I will show later, is the real actual old Chinatown. Although this gate looks quite new, it is the new gate to the old Chinatown. Actually there was an even newer looking gate being erected but the bit across the middle wasnt in place yet, or perhaps it had been knocked down. All I know is, Chinatown gates are being erected all over Japan.
This narrow street used to be all Chinese opium traders.
Here we have the first of the Chinese temples for the evening.
This little one is the best. There is a third one but the gate was shut and I could not get a good photo.
The streets extending up steep dark hills were very interesting. Cats were darting about everywhere.
I descended back to new neon Chinatown, which was very quiet at night. Perhaps like the Yokahama one it caters to bus loads of day trippers.
Time to head back up a hill. I noticed that everywhere was a named shopping street of some kind. Generally with signs explaining something important about them.
I wondered why this old building was in the middle of the road. Strange place for a shop I thought. Except its the police station.
There were 50 cats in this park, and an army of people feeding them. If you are a cat and reading this, get on the next flight to Japan.
I followed the tram to the end of the line at the top of a hill. Every tram looks to be a different model and color scheme. I suspect they collect all old trams from around Japan to keep the service going here.
Another shopping street, most of the old fashion stores close at 7pm.
This market was still open. The grumpy old man who owns it lurks in the shadows, competing with me in a glaring contest.
And...another shopping street. You probably cant see the school girls clearly, but I have noticed they all have short style boy hair cuts here. Very weird, I have not noticed that trend elsewhere. Not that I make a habit of comparing school girls.
There are a huge amount of weird old junk shops in Nagasaki. Some of them stay open late too.
Now we start our tour of the famous stone bridges. I dont know if they are old, I dont know if they survived the bomb. They appear to me to be in very good condition.
In a few places you can climb down to the waters edge for a better angle, and a long exposure like this one.
This bridge is called the 'spectacles bridge'. Handheld 1/10, nice reflection, best photo of the evening.
As often happens, my final photo this evening is my dinner. I think my dinner was Chinese. Or Singaporean. It reminds me of the dry noodle you get there with the sticky sauce. I was not really sure what I ordered, but it had 4 chillis on the menu and nothing else had more than 2, so it was an easy decision. I had assumed it was vegetarian, it wasnt. I also suspect it to be Chinese because it came with hot and sour soup rather than miso. Anyway, it was ok, the noodles were cold but the stuff thrown on top was hot. The raw egg in the middle is however a Japanese addition.
There are currently 2 comments - click to add
jenny on 2018-11-12 said:
You found the Spectacles bridge already!
adriana on 2018-11-12 said:
i think I still have a Queen cassette somewhere.
Hiking up Inasayama to enjoy the insane view of Nagasaki
Today I saw probably the best view of the trip so far, then the atomic bomb museum. Thats the tl;dr version.
The full version is, I awoke early and ran down to the port. The sun was about to appear and appear it did, in all its grandiose majesty. The water was azure and tranquil, welcoming of this pig nosed stranger and his unusual knack for photographing the obvious and mundane. Ships were bobbing up and down ever so gently as if to wave hello to those that would be... enough of that.
The view from the port was great. Then I ran over a bridge. The journey to the top of the hill, Inasayama had a great view most of the way, so I took a long time to get to the top.
The last bit promised to have paths through the forest. No, all destroyed. There were plenty of annoying signs telling me I must follow only the temporary path along the road into the traffic. This was particularly frustrating at the last bit which easily added a kilometre onto the journey when I could see a grand staircase to the top that looked fine to me apart from one piece of railing crushed by a rock.
Once at the top, the view was great. There were other westerners up there, with their taxi drivers, talking about baseball, sumo, cruise ships, basically talking to them about anything except how the entire place was wiped out in a flash.
After taking too many pictures, I descended an alternate way, along the road again, and through the awesome streets built on ridiculous slopes and I wound up at the bomb museum.
There are 3 areas to see, the peace park (full of kids being silly and far too happy), the museum (full of tourists) and the memorial hall (strangely completely empty apart from me and security).
I think its actually a nicer museum than Hiroshima, but the day I visited the Hiroshima museum it was pouring with rain, so my comparison may be unfair.
I then still had many km to walk back to my hotel, at the double, eating a cream filled sandwich and drinking a delicious CALPIS sour yoghurt soda.
Obviously there will be a lot of pics today, so lets get started. Here is a boat, and todays hill behind it. The clouds were just parting as I got here.
Heavy shipping and huge bridge in the distance, taken from sea level.
Inasayama and its many antennas at the top.
A giant cruise ship in the almost smoke free distance. The rain from yesterday mostly put out all the farmers rubbish fires... for now.
I had to cross a bridge over the harbour, this ship timed it well for me. Thank you mr ship.
From my bridge view point I could plan tomorrows hill.
This however is todays hill. It is not very far and there is a cable car. It turned out to be quite far due to having to follow the road.
Obviously there was going to be a shrine at some point.
On the side of the hill they close this street off for a market. I am not sure it needs to be closed, there is no one around.
The view from the graveyard is pretty good.
Light was tricky at this point.
Thats probably enough photos from this low down vantage point.
I thought I found a detour, it was destroyed in sections by landslide and boulders, but eventually joined back up with the main road.
After longer than I thought it would take, I rounded a bend and spotted the summit lookout. Even from this point it was still quite far on foot.
Now we start the series of views from the top. I was never quite sure if my photos were straight or not. Hills everywhere.
Where I am staying is near the right edge of this photo.
The bomb epicenter is near the centre of this photo.
Ahhh, beautiful towers on the top of every mountain.
Looking out over the East China Sea. Nice islands.
I thought I tried to open my squinty eyes for this photo. I think I permanently squint, or I just have squinty eyes now.
Time to head inside for a snack. An ice cream, a sandwich, some sushi, a chocolate bar, anything. NOPE! Shops shut, no food vending machines. Fail.
Half way down the other side you can take photos like this and pretend you were off in the wilderness.
The reality was around the next bend I was again looking over the city.
Just begging for a landslide. Very strange choices for construction locations here. Deadly landslides occur in Japan roughly thrice weekly.
I was glad to get back to some stores where I bought a sandwich filled with cream and strawberries (without needles).
Here we have the peace park. It is filled with statues donated by various countries. This is the biggest of the statues.
The bomb epicentre is marked by a rather bland looking black obelisk.
Strangely, much of the exhibits commemorating the bomb focus on this one cathedral that was a few hundred metres from this spot. They relocated a part of it to here when they built a mall on the actual spot.
The top of the museum offers a view of Inasayama, just in case there had not been enough view today.
The grand hall of the museum features a re-creation of the cathedral. Why the focus on a cathedral? 75k people died.
FATBOY. I am presuming this is not the actual bomb.
Its a paper crane made from paper cranes!
Last photo for today is the bottom of the memorial hall. The book shelf at the end contains all the names of everyone killed by the bomb. Nagasaki was only destroyed because of bad weather, the original target was Kokura, where I climbed the city mountain a couple of days ago, but cloud caused the plane to divert to a secondary target, Nagasaki.
Cruise ships and Okonomiyaki in Nagasaki
I originally planned to go somewhere else tonight, but as I stepped outside, I heard the unmistakable earth shaking blaring of a ship horn, and I knew that must mean the cruise ship was leaving port, right on dusk. So because I could never ever see such a thing in Australia on Sydney Harbour (every evening, 7pm, 5 minutes from my office/hotel) I decided I better get down to the port and gawk at a ship.
They had to turn it around and then sail it out under the huge bridge, so that was fun to watch and take long exposures of the darkened waters and hills for a while, me and about 50 guys with tripods and huge lenses.
Then I remembered that I have not yet had all the major Japanese food court groups yet, I had forgotten Okonomiyaki. How Could I!
Therefore it was time to hunt for a foodcourt, which was not much of a hunt as there are plenty around the harbour, and sure enough the first one I went to had every version of Okonomiyaki. So thats what I had.
This left one task for the evening, find a cat. I made a commitment to provide a daily cat photo, and I do as I say, so find a cat I did.
Tomorrow, probably more hills to climb.
Here is the giant ship being turned around to sail back to China.
While they were performing a 9 point turn I flipped around and took this photo of a canal. I believe thats an art gallery back there also.
I really didnt think it would fit under the bridge, but it did, easily.
Since my camera was set for long exposures now, here is the hill I ran up earlier. Will I go up there one night to enjoy one of the 3 great night views of Japan? Maybe!
Let this be a warning to lovers everywhere. If you get up to nonsense in this restaurant they will cut off your heads.
The Nagasaki Port is now just a series of restaurants and yacht parking. Ships out grew the port.
And here it is, Okonomiyaki. The slightly fishy kind even though its pork and noodles with the green onions and a customised addition of a soft poached egg. I seem to eat at least one raw or almost raw egg every day. Luckily I am not pregnant and dont have to worry about Listeria. Apparently thats on the official travel advice thing for Australians travelling to Japan.
The food court visit took me back near the main JR Nagasaki station. Over the road is a quiet strip of restaurants, more like bars.
These places are terribly sad and cruel and should be outlawed. Japan is making it illegal to work excess over time, but this place is open all night and the entry way is full of tiny little shoes belonging to tiny little children who are being screamed at many hours after school ended for the day. Also note that girl about to walk past has a boy hair cut.
And here as promised, is tonights cat. Not an attractive cat this one, I think hes missing part of his ear.
There are currently 2 comments - click to add
adriana on 2018-11-13 said:
Yes cram schools are child abuse. that cruise ship looks like the same one from Hakata.
mother on 2018-11-13 said:
It's little boy and fat man.
There are currently 3 comments - click to add
David on 2018-11-12 said:
Actually, I always put on weight on all my trips. I have not lost the weight from my China trip still.
My fancy watch tells me exactly how much effort is involved in my activities, and the answer is, not enough compared to the running I do in Australia. No amount of walking up mountains seems to compare to running 10km.
Let this be a lesson to everyone who thinks that gym memberships have anything to do with weightloss.
Also let this be warning to anyone who thinks their pathetic few steps on their holiday between the sites is in anyway compensating for the donuts and deep fried crap they eat while overseas.
mother on 2018-11-11 said:
you cannot climb mountains and live on soup. Eat more!
mother on 2018-11-11 said:
You're getting some nice autumn colour now. Such a pity that all the traditional shopping arcades are closing down due to new shops round all the stations.