16 April 2025
White light district
Kumamoto bar and entertainment areas
Just a short outing tonight due to a lot of km earlier.
First I saw a bunch of white lights and assumed there was a street full of dentists, but no, the curtains, care bears (?) and 18+ signs everywhere signalled this was the red light district, now with white lights.
There were a lot of interesting looking love hotels, but of course I was there too early for most of the lights to be on.
I then remembered that I had better eat dinner early or go without (or go to a stand up bar and eat stuff off sticks), so I headed up to the top level of an otherwise closed department store. The food floor was mostly still open, but one place was full of a boisterous office party, one had zero customers and the chef was asleep, and that left Din Tai Fung.
As far as Din Tai Fung's go, it was a bit unauthentic, but it was still ok, I think it was Taiwanese food Japanified.
Kumamoto generally appears a bit shabby, here is a good example, the streets all have bits of bitumen where repairs have been half arsed, just like Australia, where anyone can just dig up the street whenever they feel like it, and or draw all over it with various colours of spray paint to indicate where you might want to cut it up, some time in the next 10 years.
Not only have they stolen the name of the once British now Chinese car company, but they have also stolen the font. I think they are selling real estate and or trading cards?
Here is the red light district, with care bears, that is now white.
Although this building is still red, surrounded by white lights.
The top floor of the department store was largely open, but still quite sparse, especially compared to the food court I showed last night in the newer style mall.
Din Tai Fung beef noodle and xiao long bao combo, no chilli oil was on offer. Poor photo, there was a very bright but very focused spot light shining on the tea.
The Shotengai area was still doing ok at 8pm, there are a lot of restaurants along here and some were still open.
The edge of the bar district.
To find the bar you want to go to in Japanese cities, you have to go into the bar information booth. A lot of bars are on upper floors and have seating for up to 8 people! I think the prices include drinks for a period of time or something like that.
Tomorrow is a rest day, I feel a castle in my future.