Fukuoka, Hiroshima, and the Iya Valley

Week 2 of our Japan trip where we finally left Tokyo and explored the South of Japan. It was great to get out of the big tourist cities explore the less troden path. Fukuoka gave us an everyday Japanese city experience. Beppu showed us what you can find if you spend more than a few weeks in the country (and we’d certainly spend more time there if we go back!). Hiroshima was a poigant reminder of the impact of unbridled warfare. And the Iya Valley was an excellent experience of rural/remote Japan.

Wednesday 28th May: Toyko to Fukuoka

After our time in Tokyo we now had a long day of travel down to Fukuoka in the South of Japan. We made our way to Tokyo station to jump on board our first proper shinkansen and even caught a glimpse of the Hello Kitty train shortly before leaving. We’d had such a blast in Perth and Tokyo that we hadn’t actually planned much more of our Japan trip, and so we used our time on board the trains to flesh out the rest of our stay in Japan and write a bit of blog.

We arrived at Fukuoka in the evening and made our way to our hotel via the metro line. After dumping our bags, we went out in search of dinner and with the help of a Japanese speaking foreign student we found a small authentic ramen spot which was a delicious end to the day (we decided the seafood vending machine near the hotel wasn’t for us!)

Thursday 29th: Fukuoka

Today we explored the nearby Maizuru park and explored the Fukuoka castle ruins which consisted of the large foundational stone walls as, like many other Japanese castles, the wooden structure had burnt down long in the past. Just across the road was the Fukuoka Prefecture Gokoku shrine so we popped in to pay our respects and collect another Goshuin.

A quick subway ride later and we were in Hakata - an old town-turned-suburb of Fukuoka’s, complete with several shrines and temples. We visited the Hakata Kushida shrine and saw the massive ceremonial floats that the locals run around with in their annual festival and then grabbed some tasty curry noodles for lunch.

Our next stop was the Tochoji temple to see the huge seated wooden Buddha and followed its somewhat creepy tunnel of darkness underneath. Definitely a cool sight and experience. On a lighter note, we visited the Jotenji temple which is said to be the origin of Udon and Soba noodles in Japan in the 13th Century. The temple was pretty and had a raked gravel garden but unfortunately the office was closed so no Goshuin. Similarly, the nearby Shofukuji temple also seemed closed, so photos are our only memorabilia of the shrine area.

To round off the day we visited the Hakata hometown museum where we walked around an old replica workhouse and learnt about the history of the town-turned-suburb. We then called in at the Canal City for a quick dinner at the Kirby cafe!

Friday 30th: Fukuoka to Beppu

After another 7eleven breakfast (fast becoming our staple) we made our way to the nearby Ohori Park to spend our last morning in Fukuoka. The big lake had loads of herons and cranes roaming its edges, plenty of carp, and a cool series of manmade islands down the middle. After our walk we said farewell to Fukuoka and took a few trains around the island to eventually arrive in the hot spring capital of Japan for a night: Beppu.

Around the corner from our first Ryokan hotel was the Chinoike hot pool - one of the seven “hell pools” in Beppu. This pool was a deep orange colour due to its clay content, about 85C, and decorated with plenty of Oni - the Japanese demon ogres. A cool little visit and it even had a hot food spa pool to dip your toes in!

The Ryokan itself was an excellent find. It served free drinks in its lounge, including sake, and had Yakata for you wear around the hotel. We had a delicious drink made with local limes “kabosu”, but the sake wasn’t quite to our tastes! There were no restaurants nearby the hotel for dinner, so we indulged in their set menu dinner and boy we were glad we did! We had several courses of delicious food including a hotpot, sashimi, tempura and we were stuffed by the end! To finish the evening, we even tried out the Ryokan’s Onsens, our first proper onsen experience in Japan. Beppu was great and we wish we’d planned more nights here!

Saturday 31st: Beppu to Hiroshima

After a very nice night in our first Ryokan, we spent the morning exploring a bit of Beppu. We took our first bus in Japan and were fortunately helped out by a passenger when our 1000yen note was too new for the bus change machine. We visited a small shrine and then the kamado jigoku, this time seeing a bright orange and blue hot pool side by side. Another bus ride and walk and we were waiting to catch our train to Hiroshima, but not before a little old man stopped to tell us in English to enjoy our stay in Japan!

After arriving in Hiroshima and checking into our hotel we made our way to a destination on our must-do list: the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum. Despite the how busy the museum was it still had an air of calm and respect, and the fused metal relics of the atomic bomb detonation were a poignant reminder of the atrocious impact of nuclear weapons. We paid our respects at the memorial and wandered around the area in quiet contemplation.

Tanya was still in Japan and also in Hiroshima, so we met up for one last dinner together. We tried to go to a little okonomiyaki place, but the queue was about 2 hours long when we arrived… we didn’t have the patience for that! Instead, we went to a Yakitori restaurant and grilled up our own tasty skewers and vegetables and talked the evening away.

Sunday 1st June: Miyajima

A day trip to Miyajima was on the cards today. We took the train and then the JR ferry to make the most of our rail pass! We started with a walk along the back roads to the village and through a tunnel to the Itsukushima Shrine. This is the famous shrine with the floating Torii gate, and it didn’t disappoint. The gate was a vibrant vermillion red and the size of the shrine was huge, but the number of people was crazy, and they were even queuing for ‘the’ shot! We enjoyed the walk through and were surprised how clean the water was, not quite NZ/Aussie clean but much nicer than we expected!

We walked back along the main area and through momijidani park to take the Ropeway up to the top. There were deer in the park and seeing them chilling in the shade due to the heat was cute. We walked to the top of Mount Mizen to the Dainichido Temple for some stunning views over the mainland and area out to see before following the Daishoin walk back down via another temple. There was another deer rummaging in the bushes and when it turned around we saw it had a branch wrapped round its face which it proceeded to chomp through as a wearable snack!

Daishoin temple was huge and had thousands of Buddha statues throughout its grounds. We loved the little garden walk to see them all. We also went into the basement dark room area which was a little creepy as you are following a spiral in the pitch black before seeing some lit up pictures of the gods, and then another dark spiral to get out!

Having worked up an appetite and in the heat, we stopped at a soft serve place for the cutest soft serve you’ll ever see and then we couldn’t miss out on the local delicacy of a momoji: Dani maple cake! A delicious little sweet treat, we chose a custard one and chocolate one to share, delicious! We headed back into the city for dinner and an early night to recoup after a crazy number of steps!

Monday 2nd: Hiroshima to Zentsuji

Our last day in Hiroshima and so we had to explore the castle and its grounds. It was a beautiful castle and although there wasn’t a huge amount inside it was fun to walk through the Bailey and see all the different rooms and read the plaques. The original castle ended up flattened by the atomic bomb but they did an incredible job of rebuilding the replica. In some places you could still see the marks on the original stone where the heat had marked/scarred the rocks. We loved walking around the gardens and trying on the samurai helmets, but safe to say Chloe still doesn’t have an adult size head, even in Japan, and the kids helmet fitted her much better!

We headed next to the Peace Cathedral, it was pretty ugly from the outside, but the inside was beautiful, and it had some heartwarming stories from the time around the atomic bomb and how they rebuilt the city as a team. Hiroshima really was incredible and sad at the same time, here’s to their phrase of “May Peace Prevail on Earth”.

Bags collected we are heading on to Zentsuji to explore some of the mountainous area of Japan. This time we happened to be aboard one of the special Shinkansens - the One Piece themed train, where even the announcements were done by the characters of the show.

We officially feel like we are backpacking properly as we are carrying the bags every day right now! But by walking everywhere we do get to see cute sights like these baby house martins squawking in their nest. Once we settled in the hotel, we crossed the road to a tiny family run restaurant and had a delicious meal of tempura chicken for Mike and a pork rib stir fry for Chloe - scrumptious! We also tried a lactose-based drink called Calpis which was surprisingly nice. Finally, we then had our first adventure to a Japanese supermarket to buy food for lunch on tomorrows adventure to the Iya Valley!

Tuesday 3rd: Iya Valley

We started pretty early for a day trip to the Iya Valley. We took the train through to Oboke and it was beautiful seeing the flat rice/paddy fields turning into hills and forest covered mountains. We were greeted by the train conductor yokai (demon/spirit/ghost) as the area was famous for it’s spirits, and even has a spooky museum that we would visit later.

Our first stop of the day was the peeing boy statue, very similar to Mannekin de Pis in Belgium. We caught the bus and it followed the wiggly mountain roads for almost an hour to get to our destination. The last 15 minutes was a narrow single width road winding through the top of the valley, and naturally we caused a traffic jam when we met another car (fortunately the bus always wins!). We arrived at the peeing boy statue which had picturesque views, but sadly the next bus wasn’t for another 2 hours and there was little else to do in the middle of nowhere, not even a walk!

We did however manage to find the most beautiful Onsen at Hotel Iya nearby. We took a cable car down to virtually the edge of the river, travelling down a 42-degree incline, it felt like we were back on a ride at Disney only without the speed! The Onsen itself was open air and looked directly into the Valley, the water was 39C which was perfect to just laze around, and Chloe had hers all to herself which was even more bliss. We went back up to the top and tried the indoor pool, much less serene but still lovely, the 41C temperature here made it much harder to laze in though as it was very hot.

Feeling zen and refreshed we got on the bus to head to the Vine Bridge across the Yoshino River. The bridge is built every 3 years from Monkey Kiwi Vine, and you can walk across it. Walking over it sounds easy, but you can definitely get your foot stuck in between the gaps and so it was way scarier than you first think! We were pretty proud of ourselves when we made it across, and we even got a round of applause from the locals nearby. We went for a short but sweet walk down to the river, put our hands in the beautiful blue water, skimmed some stones, and saw a lovely waterfall.

Our final destination of the day was the Monster and Stone museum, dedicated to all of the folklore surrounding the areas yokai. It was super cool to see the grusome monsters and read their quirky horror stories, and Chloe even got taken away by the Kappas! (I’m sure she’ll be back by the next blog post!)

Finally, we caught the train back to our hotel in Zentsuji. We were feeling pretty whacked by the time we got back so just got some dinner from the Lawson down the road and relaxed while doing some hotel prep for the next few weeks. A cracking day visiting the Iya Valley.

What an action-packed week that was, and probably the most photo-rich blog post to date! Keep an eye out for our next blog post where we visit Osaka and Kyoto.