our day to go and explore a bit of kumamoto…
since david had work, michelle and i partially planned to go to kumamoto castle and suizenji park. after waking up, at around 10-ish, and even hearing some roosters crowing, dave left us a cellphone that we could use to get in touch with him while we traveled around the city to meet up for dinner. had to find and change the language to english though 😛 the cellphones have so many crazy functions here, ours seem extremely primitive.
after finally leaving, to walk to the train station, we bumped into the closeby uniqlo, and… i bought more stuff 😛 this is a pretty good store for interesting and pretty cheap clothing, a lot of other places are pretty expensive :S so we’ve been to 3 different uniqlo’s but the actual clothes are pretty much the same, same with the graniph stores we’ve found. after shopping there for a while, i had enough stuff that i should go back to david’s place to drop it off before heading out again. hahaha…
as we walked back to the train station, not knowing ‘exactly’ where it was, there was a pedestrian bridge that had stairs on the sides and a sloped area in the middle. in that minute, i was wondering wtf that was…. and the next, a bike came down on that path! aaaahhhhh, thats pretty cool!
subway to shin-suizenji station which led us (sorta) to the park closeby, not much signage leading us to it, (in english anyways) and the park took 3 years to create, but the landscaping was very interesting and elaborate. the lake in the middle was full of carp and the water was so clear, unlike all of the previous lakes we’ve seen. there were also some ducks and cranes. the trees were trimmed reguarly (we saw a gardener or two working on them) and positioned creatively on the land areas.
walking around, we saw a series of torii gates, which seemed like a rip off of the inari shrine we went to the other day… as well as a weird hill that was too obviously man-made. then we opened the map we were given. the hill was actually called mt. fuji! they were trying to capture famous japanese landmarks within this one park, it was very interesting.
we left and headed towards kumamoto castle by the tram, pretty easy to get to. the castle was.. ok. the most interesting parts of the castle area were the turrets and the walls leading to the castle. the walls were sloped slightly and then went straight up, which is supposedly harder to climb. the azoumon gate (or something like that) was the south-east exit, which is usually called the hell gate, that would let demons in, was only used to remove dead bodies and waste. this castle is part of the three famous castles in japan, probably because of the castle area, not just the main tower, which was the only part of the area that was rebuilt.
after exiting through the azoumon gate we visited the traditional crafts centre, which was nothing like the kyoto crafts centre was supposed to be. not much souvenirs, a lot of actual… expensive… crafted pottery and stuff. downstairs had a small ‘doll’ collection, a bunch of porcelain-type dolls with creepy eyes. yikes. michelle found them pretty amusing though.
we walked back to the shopping district kamitori and shimatori (somethin like that) where we looked around a lot and i finally found a decent bag or two, but had to decide…. we’ll see if its good enough 😉 there are a lot of ppl who’s jobs… suck. they stand out in the street and give out packs of tissue or holding a sign, or yelling out to ppl to come on in, showing menus and stuff… :S ouch.
david called and we were to meet in front of parco where the spinning marble statue thing is… and there we waited. at one point, a bunch of ‘healers’ approached me and i just said, no, and they moved on (i had no idea what they were doing) then they went to michelle, hahaha, hilarious.
anyways, david shows up and we walk through a bunch of streets and end up in a restaurant that i can’t remember the name of, but michelle took some cards, and david did the ordering. we had to sit inside, by the bar, where all the servers went past, the worst for david tho, he was on the outside and he’s a pretty big guy. lol. it was pretty loud, but i guess u sorta tune it out… the backyard patio was a lot a nicer but full. :@! he got a bunch of random stuff like seafood salad, and… craziest of all, horse meat. yea. it was cooked on a skewer and it was actually pretty tender and good. although kumamoto is known for it, it’s supposedly better in its raw form, a meat sashimi type thing. we talked about his work for a bit, he’s at teradyne and does engineering stuff for projects 😛
afterwards we went over to… swiss. a dessert place, and met his friend, yuko, who is leaving sometime next week to stay in… south carolina? for three months. and we talked a bit about random stuff and people, the usual. the only thing that was swiss about the place was… the posters on the wall. 😛
next stop was ‘bar alex’ a small cozy bar that’s owned by… alex. david knows him somehow and everyone was really nice. alex was from… california (i think) and is getting married here in japan. we talked about ourselves a little, learnt some stuff about them, even critiqued his menu/card. lol… there was one number that was completely different that the others. stood out to michelle… but yea, i drank a vodka+coke that was pretty good, the vodka had a vanilla flavour! then a mai tai, it was ok… and a bit later on in the night, he made a layered drink called pousse cafe. there was like… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8? layers… it looked pretty crazy to drink, but it was actually only 30%. we used a straw to drink it so that was… weird. it went down pretty fast with a bunch of different flavours, and a little burning in my mouth and throat.. lol. michelle has pictures of it… haha. that was a pretty cool experience, meeting a bunch of japanese people and the ‘foreigners’ living among them o.o… lol.
once we got back (the bar closed at 2, which is pretty late compared to a LOT of other places in japan) we all sorta just stayed up at our laptops and did whatever until 430ish… lol. tmr there’s a dinner party o.o…
a crane at the suizenji park
alex at his bar at bar alex with the other bartender, hiro, who’s only 20 o.o!
yea, i was fine afterwards.
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