Hong Kong / Japan / Singapore... Hongpan! - March and April 2025 - Page 7

Here is Ishiuchi-Dam station. There are direct trains from Kumamoto station and it is only about 45 minutes away, however despite being a JR line, IC card does not work beyond Uto Station, so buy a paper ticket. There is a toilet at this station, but there is no vending machine.

These are the signs you can follow all day if you wish. I believe there is a trail running event at some point.

Here is the dam. Nice picture!

This used to be a dam observation building, now abandoned. A lot of what you will see today is abandoned.

Below the dam is mainly farmland, I guess they never let much water out.

And since there is almost no water in the dam, I now know why they do not need to let much out.

The dam has a public toilet, I think it is still functioning.

You can walk along there if you wish, it does not go far.

There was an area of plastic lined crops under yet more plastic near the dam. They change all the plastic once a week and put it in a big pile and burn it.

This is a semi abandoned road. I will point out at this point that I saw 2 cars all day, 0 hikers, but I did hear some logging activity.

First of the trail sections.

I think this is the shrine on the top of Odake, there is no view from here.

The trail up to the top of Odake was actually steeper than I thought, my hydration requirements were on my mind.

A very smoky view, of power lines.

Sections of the trail were bamboo forest. It was a little windy but nothing like yesterday in Kagoshima, the sound of the bamboo smacking into each other can be disconcerting.

This is the section of real road that runs through the middle of the peninsula. This is where a couple of cars came, maybe once every 20 minutes.

Middle of nowhere mini shrine.

Here is a farming village in the middle of the peninsula, and they had a vending machine for me to re-hydrate. I saw no people, but probably had lots of sets of eyes on me from old ladies hiding in the fields. Also, nice solar cells.

Next was an abandoned section of road, fast low calorie burning progress.

It looks like people sometimes use this section of road, to illegally dump garbage.

Also a good spot to abandon a car.

My next goal (I think), weird light again due to smoke.

Some time later, another dam.

The next and I believe more popular section of trail starts here.

This section of trail was filled with signs explaining the local bird life, but I did not see any other hikers today.

Shrine near the top.

The last bit was quite developed.

At the top of Yudake there is some abandoned roped off picnic furniture.

And also a view! Uto is down there.

A little bit of the other direction.

I descended down into this village. Uto station is near the right edge of this photo, so it is still a decent walk from here.

And finally after many hours, I arrived back at the gloomy looking Uto station, it is some distance away from the centre of Uto. The bullet train runs through here but does not stop here.
Traverse completed. Today's word of the day, traverse.

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.

Suizenji garden/koen has an exit through the gift shop street at it's entry/exit. You can buy a special ice cream, I presume.

Behold, grass, a lake, clouds, yep it is a garden.

The mounds remind me of the burial mounds at Gyeongju in Korea, but these are not burial mounds.

A lot of grass.

I enjoyed pondering the lakes many tiny islands.

Presumably these guys fought to the death while levitating between the tiny islands.

The main mound is called, you guessed it, little Mount Fuji.

No need to go to Kyoto.

There are a few bridges to cross.

Bonus view.

The garden shrine provides a Torii gate positioned well to frame the garden, almost as though they did that on purpose.

Last one. With other people.

The castle is right in the centre of town, so a short tram ride back from the garden. Here is its impressive wall and moat.

Here you can see parts of the old wall have been covered in cement, possibly due to the earthquake.

This walkway is the bulk of the experience, and is newly built after the earthquake while they repair the walls.

Here is the most visible bit of earthquake damage. The entire building is sagging.

First view of the actual castle.

You cannot go down there, you can only go on the elevated walkway.

Surprisingly, you then walk under the castle, I am wondering if this is all new.

Best I can do for a clear shot of the castle.

This is interesting, the entire castle is resting on hydraulic springs. I presume they lifted it up to install these recently.

There are 4 levels to explore, the diorama is always the best, because it shows you what you were just looking at for real 5 minutes ago outside.

View one from the top, and unfortunately Kumamoto has committed the worst of all sins, glass windows, thus partially ruining the view.

View 2 of 2, it was brighter outside than the view through glass would have you believe.
So that is how a tourist should spend a few hours in Kumamoto, or any Japanese city really.

Not everywhere in Kumamoto is shabby, there are numerous flower beds on street corners.

I have no idea what this grey monolithic building is, a similar windowless building in central Melbourne is a water pump.

After no more than a 30 minute walk, here is the Kumamato station area, although you cannot see the actual station in this shot, but stay tuned.

IC cards (suica, icoca etc.) are being phased out in favour of tap to pay credit cards in a few parts of Japan, this works fine for me, I have an international fee free credit card, but I am not sure how well that works if you do not, I read that Americans seem to have a lot of issues, as tap to pay is not even a thing there yet? You can also use apple pay on an iphone, but no android pay unless the phone was made for the Japanese market specifically, because... Japan and it's many hoops to jump through for extra convenience.

The station building itself has many tourist stores and restaurants.

Here is my dinner which contains neither rice or noodles, hamburg steak. There was a whole story involved on a giant sheet of paper. The meal was ok, I was most interested in the baked potato. As a general rule, any meal that involves a giant piece of paper explaining how good it is, is probably not worth the effort.

The adjoining multi level shopping building was very nice, lots of little stores, but also a common eating area in the middle of them to eat the cakes and whatever you just bought.

The supermarket was also very good, I bought nothing, but handled many products and put them back.

One of the above photos had an overpass, and I was waiting for it to be time for me to go up the overpass, the time has arrived. Station on the right, multi level shopping centre on the left.

I walked back along the local drain. Here is the view looking back in the direction of Kumamoto station.

And finally, once I got back to this very wide Shotengai, I knew I was back at my hotel.
Tomorrow is a hiking day, it is going to be hot too!

My hike started at the last tram stop on the blue line, which is also Kamikumamoto train station. Convenience stores nearby. It was raining, which was unexpected.

Just a short walk up the street and you get to the start of the shrines.

It was not raining enough for me to get wet, but it did make for dark shots for a while, here is the first of a few staircases.

The top shrine was a bit of a hike (sic).

I think this one is really old as it seems to be fully closed off, with a newer much less interesting shrine in front of it.

Behind the shrine, more stairs. A lot of stairs today.

At the top of the stairs, a cool statue of Dumbledore from the Lord of the Rings movies.

Great view of the rain going away, with flowers.

The low down views today were better than the views from the summit, this is often the case.

Behind the statue, a real trail, and it was hard to follow, I needed to use yamap - this hike is not on alltrails at all.

I actually took a wrong turn off the trail into some fruit trees for a bonus view, then doubled back to what they are calling a trail.

The trail crossed a few abandoned roads, with scary abandoned houses.

I think these are bamboo plantations, presumably to send to Hong Kong to use as scaffolding.

Now I entered the extensive forestry area.

A lot of forestry was going on, the trail detoured around some of it.

Eventually I arrived at an upper car park, this is the start of the main trail to the top of Kinbo.

A nice trail, many switch backs, not too steep.

There were a couple of view spots on the way up to enjoy for 5 or 10 seconds.

There is also a road to the top, so there is a shrine and plenty of vending machines. The cafe was closed however, possibly permanently.

Best view from the top. There is a lot of reclaimed land in the bay.

The road to the top means that there are a few mini buses full of old folks from a nursing home, who are here to wait and see what happens for a while. They were generally just talking shit about me.

I could not find anywhere to do the proper stance, so this is the best I can manage. Nice man boobs (is it manboobs or man boobs?).

Almost back down to the upper car park.

I decided to go down a different way, which had more roads, but was longer. There is Mount Kinbo, and it's many tv antennas.

My journey down took me through some terraced farming areas, generally with a bunch of fancy graves around them.

I rejoined some logging tracks to check out the abandoned bulldozers.

Nearly back down to the housing line... but it is a long way back to the tram still.

There are a few open gardens dotted along the road, they are nothing special, this is the best one I saw, perhaps it has nice blossoms and leaves at the right time of year.

Looking back at the way I had come. That is the first convenience store option on my descent, the rare Daily Yamazaki. I did not go in.

Instead I visited the mini Jesus stadium.

And then after longer than planned, I was back at the tram track, and here comes my tram.

I love the sunset street photos.

For no known reason, a lot of Kumamoto streets are named after American cities. It is unclear if this is the official street name or not.

Unfortunately it is not possible due to tight streets to get a full photo of the exterior of this place, it is like a large rusty observatory with giant sliding metal doors.

The inside of it has a cake shop, a florist, and not much else. Very strange. The staircases seemingly go to nowhere.

Another random street view at dusk.

I had observed this shop front a couple of times from over the road. It is kind of on it's own away from any other shops, so I went over to investigate. Inside is a lot of tiny little eating places, all selling things on sticks.

Tonight's bar for 6 people that is a rusty shipping container in a car park.

And here is my bibimbap. Very good quality.
The train journey to Fukuoka tomorrow takes 45 minutes. I will be too early to check in when I get there.