Around Amakusa Island

Up and eager to get going, we left at about six to start our trip. We were planning on getting in a good 50 miles today, and were going to make it around most of the island. There were a few landmarks we had read about, and we wanted to stop and take a look as we worked our way around the island.

Leaving the Hondo area, we quickly came across what would be a pretty representative view of the region.

Wow.

It was pretty overcast, but very pleasant, with temperatures in the sixties. We headed up to the northern coast looking for Oppai Iwa, which translates to "Boob Rock". Now this isn't some new, bouncy pop genre, it's a large rock shaped, well, like a breast. How is this a government-sanctioned landmark, you may ask? Well, we did too, but out of curiosity, and because it was on the way to our first real stop, we took a look.

The coast along the north side of the island is filled with basalt and old lava flows. The rocks are very hard up here, and at low tide, you can walk out quite a ways.

Nope, no boobs over here

Not here, either. Cool view, though.

This...is it?

I actually felt sorry for Japanese sailors, if this is the best they had. And I wondered again at the town of Reihoku and how slim their pickings were if this ended up on the tourism literature. Well, at least walking out at low tide was nice.

Our next (first) stop was to visit the ruins of Tomioka Castle, perched high on a bluff on the northwest tip of the island. Built in 1602, this was considered a stronghold of the Shogunate, as the terrain (bluffs and ocean on three sides) and the very narrow strip of land connecting Tomioka to the rest of Amakusa, made it incredibly defensible. We dropped our bikes off at the base of the slope, and hiked up to the keep.

Entrance to the park where the castle resides

Base of the stairs leading up to the Inari shrine. It's a long ways up.

Our walk spiraling around and up to the castle

Sumi at the top of the bluff

A view from the back of the main keep

There were four large statues in the courtyard, commemorating some Very Important Men from the time the castle was built. One of them was a scholar, Rai San'yo that wrote Nihon Gaishi, in all it's heavily biased glory. He was also one of the main influencers in a school of thought that became Japan's über-nationalist streak that would cause a few problems in the early-mid 20th century. Good job, man.

Very Important Men. You can tell by the sword.

An interesting compass stone that shows, to my surprise, that Tomioka is closer to Shanghai than it is to Tokyo

The Inari shrine at the base of the castle

A view of the castle from the entrance to the park

The road along the west coast turned out to be heavily used by trucks and was fairly loud and unpleasant biking. Sumi had downloaded a new Japanese navigation app, Navi, that has a cool feature that allows you to specify what type of course you want. We put in our destination (Ushibuka) and asked for back roads. As we have learned many times in Japan: Be careful what you wish for.

This is a road?

Highway 293. One lane, moss growing down the middle

A big mountain

Beautiful landscape

The route Navi chose for us was a road that was little more than a pathway that led up into the center of the island, over several mountains. It was beautiful. It was peaceful. It was waaaaay more than we expected to be doing on our first day. By the time we hit the coast again, we were pretty exhausted, but still had a few hours to go before finally arriving in Ushibuka, a small town on the southern tip of Amakusa.

The coast was lined with other islands along the archipelago

Ushibuka. A Happening Place.

Ushibuka is a nice little town. It is split into three distinct sections by the water, and all are connected by a very large bridge system. We crossed the mile-long bridge to our ryoukan this evening, Sunset

A view from one of the bridge sections

 After cleaning up, we quickly made our way into town to find some dinner. The very nice woman who ran the ryoukan was making some just awful-smelling fish dish that we didn't want to have to politely decline. As we left, she gave us a flyer containing many restaurants in the town. All of them, understandably, specialize in fish. Great.

Long time readers of our blog know that I don't eat fish. This is a defense mechanism, really. When I eat seafood, I tend to throw up, which I find counterproductive to eating, and so I avoid it at all costs. There is a lot of Japanese food that is not fish or seafood, but most of it has some hidden in it. In any case, there was an odd-sounding Italian restaurant "Big Mama Gon", and a chain restaurant "Hotto Motto", both about a mile or so away from Sunset. We checked out Big Mama Gon. It was closed un til 6:30 (we were there at 6) and looked...odd. My guess it it was more of a lounge that served some Italian food. Too hungry to wait 30 more minutes on the chance the food was reasonable, we headed over to Hotto Motto. This particular store was a carry-out only place located next to a pachinko parlor. Imagine a diner next to a dive bar whose customers are almost always drunks at 3am.

At this point, we were hungry and tired, and not interested in taking a chance on local cuisine, so we punted. We headed to the local Daily Yamazaki, a convenience store chain, and made a feast out of what appeared palatable.

Crustless ham sandwiches, mini-salad, yogurt, apple juice, green beans and a suspicious looking pasta and egg salad that Sumi was brave enough to try. The ambiance could've used a little work.

Dessert! Crunky makes good ice cream sandwiched and bars. The mint chip is excellent. Plus, you don't get a better name than Crunky.

After our zero-star meal, we headed back to Sunset, ironically at sunset.

Luckily, the owner didn't ask us how our meal was. There were a lot of new guests that she was helping, so we were able to sneak upstairs without too much conversation. Exhausted, we collapsed, but looking forward to our trip around Nagashima, the next island, and finally onto Kyuushuu.