Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Kyushu, Japan: Couchsurfing and Hot Springs

Our final week in Japan – notably different from the others....

Couchsurfing

We arrived in Fukuoka/Hakata (one city, two names) by train from Hiroshima. After a transfer and brief ride on the local train, we were picked up at the station by our couchsurfing host. She had her 1 year-old in the back seat of her car, adding Colin and I and our bags before pulling away from the station. Her English was terrific, so communication clearly was going to be easy. Her manner was informal and casual – not typical of the Japanese folks we'd met so far, but very comfortable for us. We drove to her house on the northeast edge of the city, and pulled into her small parking space next to the front door on a busy street. Entering the house, we were once again reassured that we wouldn't be expected to adhere to a strict Japanese formality and propriety – her house was a refreshing tumble of papers and kids' stuff and piles of boxes and assorted brick-a-brack. Entering and passing through the dining/common room, we dropped our bags in a room with a crib piled high with toys and bedding, a table and chair pushed to one side, and a couple of futons folded up at the edge of the remaining space. This was home for the night, and very much like home - ahhhhh.

After settling in and watching Colin pratt-fall and act the clown to make the baby laugh over and over again, our host prepped, cooked and served dinner all on the central dining table – an electric grill, a thick batter, flower-shaped local onions and bits of pork, and we had a meal of delicious okonomiaki, a Japanese savory pancake. Her first son, age 13, arrived home just as we were starting dinner and joined in. Shy about his English, he pulled out a game of video Taiko drumming after eating (like Guitar Hero, but with Taiko Drums!) and plugged it into the TV for Colin to play. What a hit!

Once Colin had gone to bed, our new friend pulled out a bottle of plum-sweetened sake, and started answering my questions about her father (American) – there was a photo of him on the wall, but he wasn't there, and her couchsurfing profile had alluded to a troublesome former partner. Her story was nearly unbelievable, except for the fact that it had been widely reported in all the Japanese newspapers and tabloids: she told me her “partner” had been an intermittently abusive alcoholic who was jailed by the Japanese police after briefly putting their son (the 1-year old) in an outdoor freezer, and later claimed to have no memory of the incident. Holy cow – chalk one up for breaking down the boundaries of Japanese formality!

Tom was scheduled to arrive the next day, and we needed a more private place to stay while he adjusted to Japan and recovered from jetlag, so I planned to book us into an inexpensive hostel or guest house. Our host called a friend – an American living in Fukuoka who she met through the local couchsurfing network – who wound up offering us his place, since he sometimes sleeps at his wife's family home nearby.
It turned into quite the experience – he is one of the was one of the craziest, most overbearing and generous people Ive ever met (that's all good, by the way! - I don't go for 'vanilla' personalities - but you probably knew that). And he's one hell of a cook, to boot.

The space - labeled in the window as a 'Speak Easy' – is his answer to the Japanese tradition of socializing in “izakayas” and his solution to hitting a brick wall every time he invited Japanese friends to his 'house' for BBQ (they would never show up – its unusual to entertain and visit in people's homes). By outfitting the place as a public space, he simultaneously overcame people's resistance to hanging out there and created a less expensive place to spend an evening drinking and playing darts. His world views lean toward the conspiracy-theory variety, but he opens his home and his world with abandon.

We spent the next day exploring Fukuoka, from its temples to the ornate festival floats on display, and eating a fantastic meal at the open air food stalls along the central river.

On our departure, our new host gifted two samurai swords to Colin, which we are not at all sure will make it through Korean and American customs, but they put a huge grin on Colin's face and the gesture warmed my heart. I am looking forward to reading a few of his stories that he gave me on a flash drive to read and edit for him while traveling....

Hot Springs
Our final days in Japan were spent in Hot Springs Central – Beppu and Yufuin, on the east coast of Kyushu, the southern island of “mainland” Japan (Okinawa is further south, but a distance further on and only accessible by air or ferry).
Beppu is known as the hot spring resort capital of Japan, which is saying a lot in a country obsessed with hot springs bathing. I wasn't as charmed by Beppu as some, apparently – despite the view of steam vents rising from throughout the town as we pulled into the station, it had more sprawl than charm, and proved to be the least friendly of the places we'd visited so far. Of course, we did arrive on yet another Japanese holiday weekend, so restaurant and other tourism staff were probably stressed to the max, but that doesn't explain the crossed arms we received from one restaurant indicating we weren't permitted to eat there if we couldn't speak Japanese, or the cat calling, tongue clicking behavior of the businessmen on the street (ick). Our discovery of (1) an ocean-front onsen/rotemburu (inside and outside hot springs bathing) with a view of the twilight-sparkly mountains and (2) an incredibly friendly Italian restaurant saved the evening! Still, we decided not to push our luck, and day-tripped to Yufuin – a hot springs town an hour into the mountains – the next day. Good choice!

Yufuin was wonderful, if crowded with people enjoying the third day of the holiday weekend. Charming streets full of crafts shops and cafes lining the several streams and canals that run through town; an enchanting thatch-roofed onsen on the banks of a small lake with a partially submerged shrine; and many cool food shops selling local honey and sausages (both regionally celebrated), as well as the usual assortment of dried and preserved fish, eels and mountain veggies.
The town itself sits in a bowl ringed by mountains, with vistas of geothermal steam vents scattered throughout the hillsides.
I was disappointed to head back to Beppu on the last bus, but determined to make our second night's experience there better. We arrived back at the bus terminal and immediately headed underground, to the extensive shopping mall under the train tracks – a common arrangement in Japan. We found the food market and browsed the isles for noodles, sushi and fried fish and veggies, carted it all back to our guest house and had a delightful evening eating and chatting with other travelers. Turned out the guest house had not just computer terminals and online access, but also an extensive English-language manga library, giving Colin the chance to recapture his stolen manga kissa experience (see travel blog entry #5: Week 2+). He was up till midnight and in seventh heaven. The return train the next day took us back to Fukuoka, and on to the international ferry to Busan in Korea.

Up next: Korean customs and samurai swords (hint: bad combo)....

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