For our last month in Japan, we opted to leave the apartment halfway through and take vacation time as usual instead of using the vacation days to pack and get everything dealt with. For major student breaks (March, August, and Christmas), the Japan Rail company offers Seishun 18 passes, 5 days of unlimited train riding for a fixed price of roughly $130. The catch is that you can only use local trains. This is an excellent deal if your schedule and sanity allow for being on the trains for long periods of time - easily 90% off for the schedule we laid out, traveling all the way to the southern tip of Japan and back again, with some side trips, taking ten days total. We ordered a whole bunch of new books, printed off some daunting train timetables, and hit the road, or rather, the rails.
Our general schedule:
Day 1: Train to Hiroshima (12 hours)
Day 2: Visit Hiroshima and Miyajima
Day 3: Train to Kagoshima (southernmost tip of Kyushu, the south-most main Japanese island) (13 hours)
Day 4: Ferry to Yakushima, hike and camp there (Documented in the next post)
Day 5: Hike back to ferry, return to Kagoshima by ferry (Documented in the next post)
Day 6: Train to Hiroshima (13 hours)
Day 7: Ferry to Shikoku (another island of Japan)
Day 8: See things in Matsuyama/Dogo Onsen (In the post after the next post!), train to other side of Shikoku (4 hours)
Day 9: Train to Osaka (3 hours), dinner at all-you-can-eat Brazilian Barbecue
Day 10: Train to Kanazawa (5 hours)
What did we do with all that train time? Well, Ana finished one sweater and most of a second one, along with a pair of socks, and read a couple of books. Lee added up how many pages he'd read over the trip at the end and was surprised to find that he'd gone through more than 4,000 pages in the books we'd brought with us. The time on trains was fairly enjoyable for most of it, with the distractions.
We've already visited Hiroshima, Miyajima, and Osaka (2), so won't be talking too much about those, but will post about our trip to Yakushima, home of some very, very old trees, and Shikoku, home of one of about three castles in Japan with some original medieval-era structures standing, and one of Japan's oldest hot springs.
Trip highlights included French Toast in a cup:
Unlike WALL-E's Cupcake in a Cup, this is actual pieces of pretty good French Toast, served in a cup, with maple syrup and whipped cream.
An actual steam engine (we didn't get to ride it, but seeing it was cool):
And Hiroshima Style Okonomiyaki, one of the foods Ana will miss from Japan:
We visited Miyajima to climb Mt. Misen and have some of their amazing oysters again as well. The deer were everywhere, as always, and since we had the Big Camera this time, we were able to get some better shots of them:
We hiked up a different path than the last time, a stair-filled path full of large rocks and impressive man-made walls:
We did not visit the famous red torii (gate) this time, but got some pictures of it from the ferry and from the mountain. When the tide gets low, everyone files out to take a picture by the torii itself:
Ana is not a fan of stair-like terrain while hiking, and the Japanese love rocky staircases as we've learned through our other hikes here. Upon reaching yet another set of stairs, Ana demonstrated her Muppet Flail of defeat:
Award for least practical hiking footwear given to these two, seen near the top of the mountain.
Despite being labeled the "Muppet Flail of Defeat" (her words) she did make it to the top just fine.
And back to the bottom for the oysters.
Even the deer wanted some.
The hike up gave us a good chance to stretch our legs between very long days on the train - we were very happy we decided to visit Miyajima and Hiroshima one last time. More pictures, including extended Muppet Flail action, on Flickr. The next post will be about our trip to Yakushima, and has sweet pictures of monkeys.
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