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| Morgan and Berin in front of the Tenmengu Shrine. Oscar lurking background, looking slightly terrifying. |
Road trip!
Berin hired a car and we all piled in for a long weekend away in Kyushu, Japan's southern most island.
Our first stop was in Hofu - in researching stuff to see in Japan we discovered that everything seems to be in the 'top 3'. We saw Tenmengu shrine.......one of the top three in Japan. Very impressive - wonderful plum blossoms and hot chips. The website said that the playground has a very impressive view, and it does!
We then drove through to Fukuoka which was Berin's home for a year when he was 16. It is a very lively, busy port city which seemed to have quite an exciting vibe. We stopped at a Yatai for dinner, which is basically a mini restaurant on a cart. Berin ordered random stuff + beer. My favourite. After that we stumbled on a random cocktail bar and drank waaaaay too much whiskey.
The next day we went to Kumamoto Castle. This is an extremely impressive Castle and series of fortifications dating from 1467. However, the main keep itself was destroyed by a fire and rebuilt in the late 1960's - it looks amazing from the outside, but inside it is a 70's style concrete and brown vinyl museum. Very, very odd, still enough of the other original structures (including the fortifications) exist for it to be truly impressive.
We went to an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner - pity Dad wasn't there, he could have told them to lie down and take off all their clothes (he is a Doctor at the refugee centre).
Highlights - the food (it always is) especially meat on sticks, getting stared at in Hofu (I don't think they see a lot of foreigners) and the overall surrealness that is Kumamoto Castle
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| Berin, Oscar and Nic at Tenmengu Shrine, Hofu |
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Oscar about to finish off Nic at the Imperial Villa.
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Kumamoto Castle - looking good for something that is going on 40 years old...
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| One of the original bits - looking good for something that is going on 400 years old... |
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| Everything is better with jazz hands.... |
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| The Yatai - I'm busy discovering one of my 'food boundaries' - chicken cartilage. Thanks, Berin. Don't listen to him when he says something has great 'mouth feel'. |
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Working on our album cover after a couple of drinks.
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| Fukuoka Tower - it is actually a communications tower and completely empty apart from a coupled of floors of observation room and a restaurant at the top. |
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