Kagoshima - Day One

I've been getting more and more funny looks as we go further into Kyuushu. I guess white guys are a rarity around here. It doesn't help that I'm about half a foot taller than most people around here, even when the girls are wearing 6 inch heels. I've also had several clusters of schoolgirls (middle school is my guess), all say "Haroo" to me repeatedly, until I reply "Hello", then they giggle. I think this is sort of what a caged monkey feels like. I really wanted to say "今日は、みんなさん。いい天気ですね。お元気ですか？" and see their reaction, but that would have probably just disappointed them, so I played along.

This morning, before leaving Kumamoto, we checked out the Traditional Crafts building, where people make stuff in an old fashioned way and sell it for extremely large amounts of money. We figured we would take a look and see what they had. What they had was a lot of nice, well made stuff, be it pottery or Damascene jewelry or what have you. A bunch of middle-aged women wearing expensive clothing were "ooh"ing and "aah"ing over the stuff. I almost gagged when I saw a woven wicker basket going for over ¥15000 (US$170) and a medium sized ceramic vase for ¥545000 (US$5600). We clearly don't appreciate fine art, and I am fine with that. I also heard a woman use, without the slightest hint of irony or discomfort, わたくし(watakushi) to describe herself, repeatedly to others. Perhaps she was just being formal, but I got the impression that was how she always spoke. We were happy to leave.


<for those of you who aren't very conversant with Japanese, watakushi is a formal way of speaking about yourself. It is not common usage, and to consistently refer to oneself that way can be seen as fairly pretentious. It is also stereotypically used in TV to imply someone from a wealthy family and usually rather snobbish>

On another side note, I have mentioned before how the Japanese love cute things, and use them everywhere, especially in marketing. In the 750m walk to the train station, we encountered these:

A construction cone just isn't good enough unless it's shaped like a bear.

The caption reads "Exciting, heart-pounding Kumamoto service" It's for the new shinkansen service in Kyuushu. The bear is the "mascot" of Kumamoto, and is everywhere, from cell phone ads to official municipal postings.

So, we then took the shinkansen to it's final stop in Kagoshima, the biggest city this far south (600,000). With Sumi's bad ankle, there wasn't going to be much hiking today. She needs to rest it for a day or so. This was fine, as it allowed us to take it easy. Of course, we didn't actually DO that, but we had the chance....Instead, I walked and Sumi limped from our new hotel to the local aquarium (less than a mile) which had some very nice exhibits of marine life exclusively from the Kagoshima area.

It's a bird, it's a fish...it's a confused, prehistoric creature with wings, gills, fins and legs called a Gaspar.

After the aquarium, we headed to the nearby boardwalk (Kagoshima is on the sea) called Dolphin Port, and ate at a wonderfully named restaurant, "びっくりドンキー"(The Surprised Donkey). My guess is the donkey was surprised at being in Japan, since there aren't any here. In any case, it was what they call a "Hamburger Restaurant", which is different than our hamburger restaurants in that they, of course, don't actually serve any hamburgers. They serve things made with ground beef that more closely resemble high school cafeteria Salisbury Steak (which resemble steak about as closely as I resemble Michael Jordan). The presentation was pretty good, though, and the taste wasn't that bad, especially for the price. They have an interesting way of presenting the menu, which is to bring a large trifold wooden menu out and set it on your table.

The food comes on hot, sizzling skillets to try and convince you the meat wasn't boiled (it was, I'm fairly sure)

Seasoned fries with wasabi mayonaisse. The best food on the menu, not counting the desserts

They did have some other interesting items on the menu, though we didn't try them

They did know how to do dessert, though. Not quite as amazing as last night's Swiss Cafe parfaits, but quite solid, in their own right.

We'll see what happens tomorrow with Sumi's ankle. We may spend an extra day bumming around Kagoshima to give it time to rest. There are some terrible movies playing in the area, and we have yet to Karaoke (Japanese-style, in a private room). I also still have a ton of schoolwork to do. I'm sure we'll find something to keep us occupied.