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Prefectures #42 and #43 -- Oita and Miyazaki
We're at the Miyazaki Ekimae Toyoko Inn now.
We started the morning off in Kokura, eating breakfast at the hotel. I'd actually planned a late departure from there because I figured we'd have to spend a while in the morning figuring out train passes, but since we figured them out the night before, we could sleep in... figuratively. Until 8am. Woot.
Kokura 1027 -> 1136 Nakatsu
Nakatsu 1145 -> 1321 Oita
Nakatsu is the birthplace of Yukichi Fukuzawa, the guy who founded Keio University, among other things, and apparently there's a museum about his life there. But, I didn't actually know that beforehand; they had a small display about him in the train station, at least, which I saw in the 9-minute layover there when I ran to go get the station stamp.
We only had a little bit of coastline to see on the first leg, and the second leg was in a train that had seats only on the sides, no booths. The weather was cloudy and dark most of the day anyway.
We stopped in Oita City because I figured the capital should have some interesting stuff. (It seems that perhaps nearby Beppu would have been more interesting in retrospect, but whatever.) We got out, looked at a map, and decided to walk to the ruins of Funai Castle. All that is there now is a culture center building, a shrine, and a big castle wall with a few small towers. You can go to where the main castle tower was... and now it's just a big flat area on top of a stone wall with a semi-nice view of the city. Kind of like the castle ruin I saw in Obama last year.
The castle ruin. On the right is the platform that we went to.
Benoit takes some photos down of the surroundings.
I am in a castle in an alternate time and space line!
We ended up getting lunch at a Coco Ichibanya, after walking along several shopping streets and trying to find something that was 1) vegetarian and 2) open at 2:30pm. I had the monthly special tonkatsu curry, and Benoit had "vegetable curry"... which, stupidly, turned out to have meat in the curry sauce. I guess I hadn't thought to ask them about that. So he ate the veggies and some of the rice and left most of the rest of it there.
Then, back to the station and back on the road.
Oita 1523 -> 1644 Saiki
Saiki 1720 -> 1834 Nobeoka
Nobeoka 1848 -> 2019 Miyazaki
For reference, Saiki is spelled that way but the kanji for the station is 佐伯. Which I knew as "Saeki"... or specifically as Takahiro Saeki, who was a 1B/LF for the Yokohama Baystars and recently just signed with the Chunichi Dragons, despite him being like 40 years old. As a result I wanted to get the station sign with my Doala!
(BTW, there were a lot of station signs I wish I could have gotten good pictures of but didn't. Like 宇佐 (USA) or 土々呂 (Totoro))
These were largely pretty comfy trains. I slept for the entire Saiki->Nobeoka trip after snapping at Benoit in Saiki station, figuring I was either low on sleep or low on food or both.
I did get the station stamp at all of these, but no bonus stations today. There weren't a hell of a lot of long stops, and when there were, either it was an unmanned station or it'd have taken too much effort to run up and down. Usuki might have been worth it, a whole bunch of kids from their HS baseball team got on the train there, which was really funny, they were playing with a ping pong ball for some reason, and reminded me a lot of my JHS boys, who I still miss, apparently.
A few stations had these adorable mikan chairs on the platform, so during a 5-minute wait at Tsukumi station I took a photo on one:
And another amusing station photo:
This is also in Saiki station actually. After stepping outside and going back in I wanted a picture with the cat. The stationmaster actually came in like "Hey, you're going to Nobeoka, right? The train's over THERE..." and I'm like "I know! I just wanted to take a photo with the manekineko!"
Shrug.
Anyway... we did get to Miyazaki eventually. And the Toyoko Inn is literally right next to the station. On the other hand they asked me to copy my gaijin card, which I hadn't had to do in ages, and I got a little pissy about it. (Benoit seems to be just fine with them copying his passport, but I've been playing the "I live here and I'm a Toyoko member" card at all the hotels before this one.)
We threw our stuff upstairs and then decided to go hunt for dinner. Not much seemed to be open near the station so we asked at the desk and they gave us a map to an area of town about a kilometer away that was supposed to be the downtown nightlife area, I guess it's called Tachibana, something like that? I bet![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kawaru would know, but I dunno what country he's in now. So we went there and wandered around for a while looking for things to eat and other interesting stuff.
I'd seen a "Giants Plaza" on the map as well and was curious about it, and coincidentally Benoit got a phone call from Christina around when we were there, so... while he was talking on the phone, I went into the Giants plaza store, which had 4 people in there and a bunch of Giants merchandise and random pictures and stuff. They were kinda surprised to see a white face, I guess, but I immediately just started talking in Japanese asking about the place and so on. Turns out that of the 4, one guy worked there, and the other 3 were just friends of his hanging out; the two women were Softbank Hawks fans, though the other guy was a Giants fan. I told them I'm from Tokyo and actually hate the Giants and love the Fighters but they were cool with that. We chatted about spring training and HS baseball (Nichinan!) and some other random stuff for a bit, and then Benoit finished up his phone call and came in, and being as he doesn't speak Japanese I figured I should just cut the conversation and take some photos and be on my way.
Miyazaki's Giants Plaza store.
I totally hope this doesn't get used as blackmail material someday... the store clerk guy basically was all like "If you're gonna take a picture we should put some stuff on you. How about a happi? Wanna hold one of my boards that Hara-kantoku signed? This one's from the WBC in 2009..."
Yeah.
(Speaking of which -- there were a bunch of Nobeoka Gakuen HS baseball players on the last leg of our train travel and I JUST REALIZED NOBEOKA WENT TO KOSHIEN THIS YEAR OMG. You know... if we'd stopped in Beppu I suppose I could have also hunted down Meiho HS. Oh well. There are a LOT of good baseball high schools in Kyushu. Can't get to all of them...)
Anyway... after wandering around for a while and finding very little promising in terms of not having meat or fish in something, we ended up at Watami -- not Wataminchi -- and it was more like what I had said an izakaya should be like. We got a table just for two of us in a booth, the menu was a lot better, they were able to make some things like yakisoba without meat in it, Benoit could have hot tea, and I had tsukune which was really really good, and corn and various other stuff. Yum. So it was a good experience and now Benoit doesn't entirely think all izakaya suck. Also, because we wandered around the restaurant/nightlife area and all, I feel like at least we actually DID something in the city besides just stay overnight, thus making my conquest of the prefecture slightly less lame.
Then we came back here and did laundry. So now it is like 2am and I've got to get up at 7am because we have to be on a train by 8:46am tomorrow. Whoops. At least tomorrow should be a relaxing day, we get to Kumamoto relatively early and will then see the castle the NEXT day.
We started the morning off in Kokura, eating breakfast at the hotel. I'd actually planned a late departure from there because I figured we'd have to spend a while in the morning figuring out train passes, but since we figured them out the night before, we could sleep in... figuratively. Until 8am. Woot.
Kokura 1027 -> 1136 Nakatsu
Nakatsu 1145 -> 1321 Oita
Nakatsu is the birthplace of Yukichi Fukuzawa, the guy who founded Keio University, among other things, and apparently there's a museum about his life there. But, I didn't actually know that beforehand; they had a small display about him in the train station, at least, which I saw in the 9-minute layover there when I ran to go get the station stamp.
We only had a little bit of coastline to see on the first leg, and the second leg was in a train that had seats only on the sides, no booths. The weather was cloudy and dark most of the day anyway.
We stopped in Oita City because I figured the capital should have some interesting stuff. (It seems that perhaps nearby Beppu would have been more interesting in retrospect, but whatever.) We got out, looked at a map, and decided to walk to the ruins of Funai Castle. All that is there now is a culture center building, a shrine, and a big castle wall with a few small towers. You can go to where the main castle tower was... and now it's just a big flat area on top of a stone wall with a semi-nice view of the city. Kind of like the castle ruin I saw in Obama last year.
The castle ruin. On the right is the platform that we went to.
Benoit takes some photos down of the surroundings.
I am in a castle in an alternate time and space line!
We ended up getting lunch at a Coco Ichibanya, after walking along several shopping streets and trying to find something that was 1) vegetarian and 2) open at 2:30pm. I had the monthly special tonkatsu curry, and Benoit had "vegetable curry"... which, stupidly, turned out to have meat in the curry sauce. I guess I hadn't thought to ask them about that. So he ate the veggies and some of the rice and left most of the rest of it there.
Then, back to the station and back on the road.
Oita 1523 -> 1644 Saiki
Saiki 1720 -> 1834 Nobeoka
Nobeoka 1848 -> 2019 Miyazaki
For reference, Saiki is spelled that way but the kanji for the station is 佐伯. Which I knew as "Saeki"... or specifically as Takahiro Saeki, who was a 1B/LF for the Yokohama Baystars and recently just signed with the Chunichi Dragons, despite him being like 40 years old. As a result I wanted to get the station sign with my Doala!
(BTW, there were a lot of station signs I wish I could have gotten good pictures of but didn't. Like 宇佐 (USA) or 土々呂 (Totoro))
These were largely pretty comfy trains. I slept for the entire Saiki->Nobeoka trip after snapping at Benoit in Saiki station, figuring I was either low on sleep or low on food or both.
I did get the station stamp at all of these, but no bonus stations today. There weren't a hell of a lot of long stops, and when there were, either it was an unmanned station or it'd have taken too much effort to run up and down. Usuki might have been worth it, a whole bunch of kids from their HS baseball team got on the train there, which was really funny, they were playing with a ping pong ball for some reason, and reminded me a lot of my JHS boys, who I still miss, apparently.
A few stations had these adorable mikan chairs on the platform, so during a 5-minute wait at Tsukumi station I took a photo on one:
And another amusing station photo:
This is also in Saiki station actually. After stepping outside and going back in I wanted a picture with the cat. The stationmaster actually came in like "Hey, you're going to Nobeoka, right? The train's over THERE..." and I'm like "I know! I just wanted to take a photo with the manekineko!"
Shrug.
Anyway... we did get to Miyazaki eventually. And the Toyoko Inn is literally right next to the station. On the other hand they asked me to copy my gaijin card, which I hadn't had to do in ages, and I got a little pissy about it. (Benoit seems to be just fine with them copying his passport, but I've been playing the "I live here and I'm a Toyoko member" card at all the hotels before this one.)
We threw our stuff upstairs and then decided to go hunt for dinner. Not much seemed to be open near the station so we asked at the desk and they gave us a map to an area of town about a kilometer away that was supposed to be the downtown nightlife area, I guess it's called Tachibana, something like that? I bet
kawaru would know, but I dunno what country he's in now. So we went there and wandered around for a while looking for things to eat and other interesting stuff.I'd seen a "Giants Plaza" on the map as well and was curious about it, and coincidentally Benoit got a phone call from Christina around when we were there, so... while he was talking on the phone, I went into the Giants plaza store, which had 4 people in there and a bunch of Giants merchandise and random pictures and stuff. They were kinda surprised to see a white face, I guess, but I immediately just started talking in Japanese asking about the place and so on. Turns out that of the 4, one guy worked there, and the other 3 were just friends of his hanging out; the two women were Softbank Hawks fans, though the other guy was a Giants fan. I told them I'm from Tokyo and actually hate the Giants and love the Fighters but they were cool with that. We chatted about spring training and HS baseball (Nichinan!) and some other random stuff for a bit, and then Benoit finished up his phone call and came in, and being as he doesn't speak Japanese I figured I should just cut the conversation and take some photos and be on my way.
Miyazaki's Giants Plaza store.
I totally hope this doesn't get used as blackmail material someday... the store clerk guy basically was all like "If you're gonna take a picture we should put some stuff on you. How about a happi? Wanna hold one of my boards that Hara-kantoku signed? This one's from the WBC in 2009..."
Yeah.
(Speaking of which -- there were a bunch of Nobeoka Gakuen HS baseball players on the last leg of our train travel and I JUST REALIZED NOBEOKA WENT TO KOSHIEN THIS YEAR OMG. You know... if we'd stopped in Beppu I suppose I could have also hunted down Meiho HS. Oh well. There are a LOT of good baseball high schools in Kyushu. Can't get to all of them...)
Anyway... after wandering around for a while and finding very little promising in terms of not having meat or fish in something, we ended up at Watami -- not Wataminchi -- and it was more like what I had said an izakaya should be like. We got a table just for two of us in a booth, the menu was a lot better, they were able to make some things like yakisoba without meat in it, Benoit could have hot tea, and I had tsukune which was really really good, and corn and various other stuff. Yum. So it was a good experience and now Benoit doesn't entirely think all izakaya suck. Also, because we wandered around the restaurant/nightlife area and all, I feel like at least we actually DID something in the city besides just stay overnight, thus making my conquest of the prefecture slightly less lame.
Then we came back here and did laundry. So now it is like 2am and I've got to get up at 7am because we have to be on a train by 8:46am tomorrow. Whoops. At least tomorrow should be a relaxing day, we get to Kumamoto relatively early and will then see the castle the NEXT day.