Sunday January 26, 2003 .....
I fell asleep with the television on as I frequently do at home. It was 7 ish when I awoke
and I watched some kind of religious programming on with bad singing and even a sign
language interpreter. Christian ? I’m not sure. In all of my Toyoko Inns in Japan, one
could find the Teachings of Buddha, alongside of the New Testament and the rules and
regulations of Toyoko Inn policy books. I took my time looking out of my window and
studying the city, rifling through papers I had accumulated and throwing some out, getting
ready and packing the bags again until it was time to check out at 10 am. They had the
remainders of continental breakfast items, but as soon as I got off the computers in the
lobby and turned around poof the breakfast was already gone and put away.
Fortunately I had seen a MR. Donut restaurant down the street. MR. Donut was to be
come a really good friend of mine on my trip. On the doors it says that MR. Donut originates
from Boston in 1956. But I don’t recall seeing MR. Donuts when I lived in Bean town --
While I was there Dunkin Donuts reigned supreme. MR. Donut’s donuts were normal like
American style however, and actually were pretty good. I would usually get 1 strawberry
donut, 1 blueberry donut ( you can really taste the fruit inside not just fruit goo) 2 bowls of
Corn Chowder and Melon soda. This combo would hit the spot with me for awhile.
Over all for me I found Japanese food to be rather bland. The corn chowder though quite
tasty (dehydrated I believe) was no exception, it is a sweet chowder sort of. It just needed a
pinch of salt. I had a hell of a time trying to find salt at any of the restaurants I went to in
general. Pepper was somewhat attainable but you had to ask for it. But even McDonalds
could not give me salt packages. They looked at me as I had 3 purple heads. Eventually I
found a restaurant that gave me about 2 ounces of salt in a plastic container. I washed
out one of my empty film containers in my hotel room and this became my salt vessel that
I kept in my coat pocket at all times. No I am not a salt freak, but I am a chef after all, and I
know when a recipe needs some salt or not.
I pulled my bags down the street about a quarter of a mile and I found an older section of town,
with a nice picturesque canal running through it. I had seen this in one of my brochures
earlier. It was a nice relaxing Sunday morning and I looked and shopped at some of the gift
shops along the canal. I took pictures of interesting old bridges, swans, and a father and
daughter feeding the Carp / Coy fish. Then after an hour or so I turned around and
backtracked towards the Train station.
I actually saw some younger women 20 - 30 ‘s wearing Kimonos for some special reason
or other walking on the streets with their boyfriends / husband.. Otherwise on my trip unless
they were shop keepers and dressed for their jobs I would not see younger women
wearing kimonos or similar garments on the streets only women 45 and older for the most
part. I went into the Department stores at the food levels and I was treated like royalty. I
tried conversing with women at a stall for about 10 minutes and they gave me a free
wall hanging of a sheep for the coming new year (Chinese) to bring me luck. They gave
me a couple of special free samples and they took my picture. I guess not to many tall
white foreigners make it into those food areas ha ha ha. I hopped on the local train and
talked with a woman by chance who I met the night before at he local AEON School the
night before. Then onto the bullet train at Okayama to go to Fukuoka. Overall I liked
Kurashiki and I made a good lucky choice to decide to stay overnight there.
At Fukuoka ( also known as Hakata -- The 2 towns merged into 1 big city over the years) the
Shinkassen stops running. I had to transfer trains to a local train to continue on to the city of
Kagoshima way in the far corner of Japan. I wanted to travel well off the beaten path on
my trip. I found and bought some Curry flavored Pringles in a can, (really good, I wish
they sold them in America).
I freaked out when I looked up at some of the overhead signs on the Platform. The sign said
DEADHEAD 101 and on the next platform It said DEADHEAD 9. I said too myself
what the hell !... am I hallucinating. Is there a young deadhead working for JR railways
here and operating the platform sign boards Wheww Hooo JERRY LIVES. I took some
pictures to send to my friend the train buff and also a real hard core deadhead. Later on
I told my friend Toshi about this and he explained that this means that the train is out of
service here and will be parked indefinitely.
Now that I am on the southern island of Kyushu I transferred to the TSUBAME ( Swallow
- as in the bird) train that looked like the bullet train by appearance except gray in color
but these trains do not go nearly as fast, and the ride is more jerky and bumpy like an
Amtrak type of train. This is where I got the boot from the reserved car because I did not
have reservations. However the Train Stewardess / Attendants wear nice Uniforms on the
train platforms. With sexy looking hats - wide brimmed like 1950’s TWA or PAN AM
stewardess or like what women used to wear to church on Sundays years ago in the
springtime. What can I say but the 3 Attendants on this train were all gorgeous. Like
you would see in the adds for JAL airlines. One of them saw that I was trying to follow
our progress down the coast with my map. She went to the front of the car and got a
pamphlet that said either PLEASE or INFORMATION in English on the cover there was
a map inside and she showed me where we were and gave me the pamphlet. The only
problem was that the rest of the brochure book is written in Japanese.
I figured well maybe she is halfway interested in the Grande Gringo so I wrote her a note
in my poor Japanese and handed her my business card with e-mail later on in the journey.
But as is par for the course, I have not received any correspondence from anyone I handed my
cards out to on my trip. I arrived in Kagoshima at night and took a taxi to my Hotel.
