Oh my god ahhhh I’m leaving tomorrow for a two-week trip with my mom, and then a few days later it’s the opening of the World Expo (commemorative Myaku-Myaku ICOCA here I come!) and then a week after that I leave on my Golden Week trip. ALREADY. I feel like I just wrote about GW last year. It’s the second most recent post on this blog! And I want to write about my upcoming big GW trip year, of course, but have so much to write about that I’ve done in the recent past too that I’ve been putting off. I’m so behind. Ahhhhhhh.
I also received two very kind messages recently which motivated me to write this post in a very spur-of-the-moment fashion all in one go:
“haiii i stumbled across your blog while i was bored at work and i literally love reading them (especially the juzo itami one) can u please write more so i wont be bored at work.
thank you so much. you are awesome.”
“Just wanted to tell you and ive been reading your blog for the last hr and half and I’m and not only nostalgic (seishunjuhachi Kippu proud traveler) and learning (didn’t know ‘Kokeshi’ is actually Sendai Ben and I lived near the kokeshi museum in Kuroishi) but laughing my butt off […] I have a special love and respect for writers. I hope you continue.”
Thanks, guys!
OK, so for my New Year’s holiday three months back, I went to Hokkaido to bask in the snow. It was wonderful and that will be a long post at some point hopefully not too far in the future from now with lots of pictures as I make my way through all my trips chronologically. For now, this shorter post is focused on the first of a bunch of mini-trips I did before then.
It’s November 23, 2024. I had recently tried, and succeeded (I thought) in convincing some fellow-foreigner acquaintances from work to drive (the horror) to Shirakawago. They like cars and were down. We had plans in place already, but then one of them, the same morning, was afraid “there might be snow” (there wasn’t) so he pulls out. The other one suddenly “has to be back by afternoon” to “deliver some documents” and didn’t realize how far away it was despite living here since he was a teenager. OK. This is very typical, frankly. So the plan to go to Gifu is cancelled. At the exact same time, my Japanese IC card collecting friend Sunagawa-san, who lives in Kyushu, happens to be down in Kumamoto to see some plane that he’s obsessed with that looks like a dolphin, and confirms to me – I had asked prior – that the old Kumamon no IC Card design is still available in some vending machines, which I had learned about after having spotted it in a photo on Twitter few days back. And not only that, but the JR Kyushu Twitter account had posted that somehow the Sagan Tosu SUGOCA (commemorative design for the local professional soccer team who according to my undergrad friend are very mediocre) is also still available at one single station, five months after its initial release… with limited, decreasing stock. Who knows how long they’ll both still be around.
So eli’s id rears its head and this happens:
An hour after that, I’m on a train with a packed backpack. And less than two hours later, I’m on a plane to Fukuoka. And then I’m on a highway bus to Saga. And then I’m in the Midori-no-madoguchi ticket office buying a card for me and a couple extras for friends. Trip success! OK, well yes, but that’s not the entirety of it, of course.
It’s around 7 p.m. at this point so I figure I should probably secure a hotel for the night. They’re probably going to be cheaper in Saga, right? Turns out that there are zero hotels available in Saga City despite the fact I’m told that no one goes to Saga because there’s “nothing here” (I keep seeing this claim online. It’s not true!) A grand total of one place tells me that they have a room but it’s smoking-only soooo I’m not doing that. Tomorrow the plan is to go down to Kumamoto, so I’ve gotta take the train back toward Hakata (Fukuoka) anyway, so might as well just head there as surely there’s more hotels open in the prefectural capital with 2.5 million people living there, compared to the population 227,000 city I’m in now.
Thanks, discount Australian airlines, for the cheap flight! This was my first domestic flight in Japan since moving here (not counting Okinawa, where it was necessary; here it was just to save time and money).
Obtained!!! And check out what the bird on the IC card is holding: another IC card.
Here’s how they allocated the cards, manually crossing off every card number on a printed spreadsheet lol. Am I allowed to post this photo?
JR Kyushu was airing some absolutely DISGUSTING generated AI slop safety announcement. Seriously fuck off.
North of the station I went to this amazing little bakery called Kusukusu 1954. They also have smoothies under a sign that says “THIS IS MENU”.
I’m not a big meat eater, but the dinner of braised pork spare ribs that I got at this camping/outdoor-themed restaurant inexplicably named “restore compass” (lowercase, in English) was absolutely magnificent. For some reason their (mobile-only website) is at the URL www.2012-12-08.com and there’s also a section on it called “secret”. 10 out of 10.
So I took local trains back to Fukuoka, transferring at Tosu, and bunkatsu-ing my tickets to make it a bit cheaper (punishment to JR Kyushu for the genAI slop signage)… a trip I’ve done like three times now (at the time of writing) since I somehow find myself in Saga quite a lot… Anyway, arriving in Fukuoka, I did a quick ride-around on the subway system because I had seen that like three of the eki-stamps had been updated, with the station names having been changed from all-caps to lowercase. Why?!?!? Who knows, but good thing I search the relevant terms on Twitter enough that I was able to find this out. So naturally I needed to add the new versions to my collection. I didn’t take any pictures of this but I promise you it’s really not that exciting. After that I decided to finally find a hotel.
Food stalls (yatai) at night, classic Fukuoka.
Turns out it’s also super hard to find a last-minute hotel in Fukuoka for some reason… but I manage to get a room at a Kaikatsu Club, an internet cafe chain, around 11:30 p.m. A few other internet/manga cafes I checked were all sold out! What is going on in Kyushu!!! It’s not the most comfortable, but it’s a flat, dark place to lie down and sleep for a bit and so it’s fine for a single night (total came out to ¥4800, a little pricey for what it was), and then I’m awake eight hours later and setting off. Since I’m walking (see: running late and thus jogging) from Tenjin back to the main station, I stop by Gion Station on the way to grab one of the commemorative yellow Hayakaken for a friend, and then have to sprint to make my local train southbound – there’s only one every couple hours. I literally bounded up the stairs, skipping every two steps with the words “do not rush for your train” printed on them, and dived headfirst through the closing doors into the seat in front of me. Old Japanese guy sitting across from me was not amused. I rarely miss trains and usually make some very tight connections or arrive just in time, but this was definitely the closest I’ve ever cut it to-date (not intentionally!!)
Oh man, the trains here are so nice. I loved this yellow. Looked so great with the morning sun shining through.
Do we think Eiji Mitooka, JR Kyushu’s favorite boy, also designed these stickers? They’re stylish so I’d guess so. (BTW, I’m making a zine called “Pinchi” with all these various “watch your fingers” signs I frequently take photos of.)
Found a funky IC card charge machine where you insert it vertically and then it locks it in place with this piece of red plastic.
Kumamoto trams, the only system in the country to stop supporting Mutual Use IC cards and transition to only their own local card and/or bank card payments (
). This whole commotion has been a great clickbait story for the news.
Kumamon train!! Super cute. This was a Kumamoto Dentetsu train at Kami-Kumamoto Station. I sadly didn’t get to ride it, instead taking a tram south into the city.
I didn’t have time to buy a physical ticket from Hakata to Kumamoto beforehand, so had to use my IC card which doesn’t give me the right to do a stopover, or to leave a station in the middle while changing trains. When doing this at Ōmuta, luckily one of the station staff heard my plea and was nice enough to let me freely pop out and right back in without tapping (thus having to pay more) just to get the eki-stamp which was located outside of the gates.
I decided to get off at Kami-Kumamoto Station in the north of the city instead – that’s the flexibility IC cards give you, over pre-purchasing paper tickets – to grab some monjayaki for lunch, but the place ended up being super busy and I didn’t want to wait. I decided to get lunch in the city instead and took the tram southbound, right to Kumamon Square, a little playroom and “base of operations” in a random department store where I was able to buy the aforementioned local card I wanted.
But wait, WAS it the card I wanted?!?! Turns out my understanding of the situation was slightly wrong… it’s not that the old card design was still available in one specific place, but rather, after having changed the front of the card a couple years back from the blue Kumamon silhouette to a cityscape design, they now apparently had silently changed it back to the old design. Except for one difference: they removed a little picture of a bus in the corner. Why?! Who knows. All I do know is that the card issuing company changed – it used to be Higin Card KK, and is now KK Higo Bank, with the card issuance & operations being merged under the purview of the main, parent company – so I guess the design changed too? What do you bet that they needed to reprint the cards but had lost the files (designed in PowerPoint, surely) for the “renewal” and thus had to go back to the old-old cards? Very bizarre but nonetheless, it’s a new card! Here’s my summary of the history of the cards and the flip-flopping designs. Archival work!!
My fourth design of Kumamon no IC Card, obtained!
There was a “welcome tourists!” display out on a shopping street with this message written in a bunch of languages along with flags, and somehow Canada had earned the right to claim the English language.
I found a very hungry caterpillar!
Not even Kumamoto is safe from the alt-right crazies with megaphones. Check out the anti-vaxx sign too lol. I gave them a thumbs down as I walked by.
Grassy tram tracks!
So, with Kumamoto things completed, it was time to start heading home, first north and then east. I had wanted to take local lines on the way back as much as I could, but I was running pretty short on time, so had to take the shinkansen for part of it. I shink’d to Tokuyama, where I got off and rode the local Sanyo Main Line for the rest of the way to Hiroshima, along the coast overlooking the Murotsu Peninsula and Seto Inland Sea. It was a very pretty ride!
Two ways to get from Tokuyama to Iwakuni: the Sanyo Main Line around the coast, or the Gantoku Line that cuts through the middle. One supports IC cards and the other doesn’t! The Gantoku Line also departs much less frequently, so even though it’s less distance, it usually ends up taking longer. I rode the Sanyo Line this time, the main route, but got to ride the Gantoku Line at a later date.
Look at this hippo. Free him!!!
These yellow trains are CLASSIC Western Japan, especially characteristic of Yamaguchi Prefecture. More on this in the near future!
Yellow hippos, yellow trains, and a yellow sun! Big Yellow is surely behind this.
Really nice. Better in motion!
Taking the conventional line trains was pretty funny because I was very much spacing out and listening to music until… BAM, 500 tourists pile on at once and I start hearing loud English all around me. Which only means one thing: My train had just gotten to Miyajimaguchi Station, where everyone doing day trips to Miyajima is boarding to return back to their hotels. Of course. But from there it’s only a short ride to Hiroshima, the home of two items of key importance tonight: the new MOBIRY DAYS IC card and okonomiyaki!!!
Hiroden’s absolute trainwreck of an IC card meant to replace the old PASPY system which was also a trainwreck. This card just got released in September!
Quick okonomiyaki dinner near the station. It was OK at best. I have a much better place I went to in a future trip here which I’ll write about later.
And from there I shinkansen’d home to Nagoya, decently exhausted. The end! But if you were sick of hearing about Western Japan already, too bad, because I’m headed back three weeks later for a whirlwind three-day Seishun 18 Kippu trip (a real one this time!) to Onomichi and Shimonoseki. That’s the topic for the next-next post. But what will the one immediately following this one be about?!? Hmmmm, I wonder…
Traveled through
