So we headed to Kumamoto, where we saw a beautiful park with shrines set up to model stops on one of Japan’s train lines and the impressive Kumamoto Castle. Then we wandered off the beaten path to a mountainside temple, far enough removed that we could forget we were in modern bustling Kumamoto for a while. We climbed quite a few steps, past incense burning and a multitude of gravesites, to a breathtaking view of the city.


We had time to kill at Kumamoto station and we needed someplace to sit down and plan our attack with the Lonely Planet (thank you Stewart!) so we ended up at a KFC. The Japanese seem to have a love affair with this chain because these things are everywhere. Even more of them than there are in the US. And each one has a statue of the Colonel outside—he’s bigger than Ronald McDonald here. This one even had country music playing inside. Weird.

We spent Golden Week Thursday on Mt. Aso (that’s Aso-san to you). We were really hoping to hike up but the visibility was so awful we couldn’t see ten feet in front of us. Thinking those might not be ideal hiking conditions we retreated to a hotel onsen (hot springs) nearby. Essentially it was a spa heated by Aso’s magma. It was a nice break.

Then we left the beaten path (quite literally) and took a train down to Takachiho. This sleepy little town in the mountains is known for very little but claims to have the cave where the Sun Goddess Amaterasu once holed up in to evade the other gods. The cave’s enshrined so you can’t really go up to it but it’s next to a beautiful gorge. That night at a nearby shrine we saw a traditional dance to retell the tale of Amaterasu’s hiding: the problem with her hissy fit was that if the Sun Goddess is inside a cave, there’s no sun in the world. So the gods huddled outside the cave and decided to perform what’s alternately described as an “interesting” and a “lewd” dance outside to attract her attention. She got curious, and peeked out, whereupon they stunned her with a mirror and hauled her out.

The final act in the performance was loosely based on the myth of the creation of Japan: a god and goddess make sake, get drunk, and have sex (in two positions I might add). Somehow I don’t think that’s quite how it happened, even by most Shinto accounts…but it was damn funny.


On Friday we went to Beppu and met up with another SCTI group by chance at the train station. Outside the station, this nice guy offered to take us around in his taxi van for a reasonable price. The taxi driver came with us; his is not a bad job: get paid to go sightseeing with people. He was really nice and actually gave us a few gifts on top of his services. We went to an obligatory jigoku (hell)—a pond of steaming red water, heated by the springs and colored by iron deposits. The hells are much too hot to swim in; back in the 19th century the locals used to boil Christians in them.

Then we headed to a sand bath onsen. A sand bath doesn’t intuitively sound like that great an idea but it was soo nice… After washing yourself off, wearing nothing but a “modesty towel” to cover your most private parts, you lie down on a bed of black sand heated by the onsen. The attendant ladies shovel sand on top of you until only your head’s sticking out. Then you just kind of lie there for ten minutes. Afterward, you get up, wash off all the sand, and go soak in an ordinary water bath. It was surprisingly relaxing. After that I left for Shikoku with a little bit of sand still in my hair but definitely refreshed.