We woke up in Kumamoto in surprisingly good condition after the nomihoudai. It looked like the udon had worked again

We paid the price of rushing to catch the tram, and jumped on the wrong one which took us to a different location, not the train station.
This lost us about 45 mins, precious time which would cut into our day in Kagoshima.
Fortunately which managed to make it up and lose only a few minutes by catching the next Shinkansen from Kumamoto to Kagoshima.

We must have still been 1/2 asleep because we forgot to put our suitcases in the train station luggage, after back tracking to the station and putting our 100 Yen coins in the locker the machine got jammed and would not accept any more coins. June went to the station office and waited in line in a huge queue. Luckily enough one of the station guards spotted Nige looking suspicious and fixed the locker.

Outside Kagoshima train station.

We caught the tram to make our way to Sakura-jima volcano island. There’s a great view when you watch it from the ferry.

View of Sakurajima from the ferry.

Luckily it was very nice weather. It is only a short journey to Sakura-jima and the boats run 24hrs.

Information boards directly outside of Sakurajima port.

Unfortunately there was not enough time so we could not go around the volcano which would require a full day, but we walked around the port. We pencilled in to return so we would be able to give the island the time it deserved. Volcanic ashes were found on the footpath in the city to demonstrate how active the volcano is.

Kagoshima is famous for its black pork so we looked for a restaurant in an area famous for black pork (kurobuto). Unfortunately this area had been relocated due to the construction of the Shinkansen train line. Since Nige & June were running out of time they decided to eat at the train station.
Once at the train station the popular black pork restaurants were full with long queues, so Nige & June went on the search for one nearby.
They managed to find a black pork restaurant down one of the side streets.

Time was starting to run out before their Shinkansen left for Kumamoto and unfortunately the staff were taking an age to prepare the meal. The lunch was finally delivered 20 mins before the train departed, so the meal was devoured at a great rush.

Kurobuto (black pork) is one of the local food that Kagoshima is famous for.

Nige & June then started running in an attempt to catch their train. Subscribe to see if they made it in time.

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Train station to get to Kumamoto

We transferred to Shinkansen and were very impressed by the style of the kyushu Shinkansen’s. They were very new with stylish wooden chairs.

The interior of the Shinkasen that travels through Kyushu, Japan.

Unfortunately we arrived at around 5pm on a Friday where everybody was either heading home or going out for a good night out.
So there was a healthy queue to get onto the tram, which would take us to our hotel. It was impossible to get off the tram for the first four stops due to the amount of people on the tram. But we managed it on the next stop.

We then did our routine room tour vlog, and then had to get our laundry out of the way.
After that it was time for us to sample the Kumamoto nightlife.

Kumamoto has a large impressive shoutengai (entertainment district) and it was buzzing with Japanese salarymen and many hostess’s looking to entice them into their bars and clubs.

Kumamoto’s impressive night district area. One of the best places to party in Kyushu, Japan if you don’t mind raw horse meat.

We went to sample Kumamoto’s local food – Baniku or Sakura-niku which is horse meat. Japan has two areas which pride themselves on the quality of the Baniku, one is South Nagano and the other is Kumamoto.

Kumamoto, Kyushu, Japan is famous of it’s sakuraniku, raw horse meat.

We found a local kumamoto horse meat restaurant down one of the side roads of Shoutengai which was basically a Baniku restaurant and offered if in several styles.
Both of us unanimously agreed that this was the best baniku we had ever tasted.

Kumamoto’s restaurants are also very good value, and this one offered nomihoudai (all you can drink) for 1000 Yen. An offer that we could not refuse.

After a delicious and enjoyable meal we realised that we had been doing nomihoudai without taking an ukon prior to drinking.
So in the spirit of better late than never we found the local convenience store which had more than enough selection of ukon for us to select. Ukon seems very popular in Kumamoto.

After the last ditch attempt to remove any potential hangovers we then retired to the hotel room.

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