Catching the train from Aomori to Hakodate in Hokkaido, Japan.

We finally arrived at Hakodate station. We spotted support beams holding the roof of Hokkaido station so that it did not collapse. It looked very make shift and seemed to be put there as an emergency measure, not very reassuring.

View of the rail tracks from inside Hakodate train station in Hokkaido, Japan

Outside the station it was very spacious and wide though a little quiet. It was also quite chilly as to be expected when you travel north of Japan.

View of Hakodate train station from outside in Hokkaido, Japan

We had found a very good rate on our hotel room, after checking in we found out why, there was a large construction site outside but the room was soundproofed so it did not worry us.

We made our way to a ramen restaurant, as Shio (salt broth) ramen is famous in Hakodate. It was tasty & delicious!
It was a basic looking dish though very satisfying to eat.

Having Hakodate shio ramen in Hokkaido, Japan.

Views of Hakodate town in Hokkaido, Japan.

After spending the afternoon at a large spacious Starbucks, we took a tram to go to ‘Yachigashira’ Onsen (hot spring) on the edge of Hakodate. It was really, really nice onsen with a good selection of hot indoor and outdoor baths at varying degrees of temperature. We spent one hour there but wished we had made it longer.

You can communicate with the tram driver with pen and paper.

June buying tickets in Yachigashira onsen in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan.

Heading back to catch some dinner in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan.

We finished the day with Hakodate Izakaya town.

Having some dinner at a izakaya in Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan.

It had been a long but very nice day.

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Although the journey was not to bad for the Shinkansen is very fast and comfortable. Though we noticed there is less room on the Shinkansens leaving Tokyo, compared to for example the Shinkansens in Kyushu.
To get from Kanazawa to Aomori involved two Shinkansens, then a transfer at the end to a local train.
The first Shinkansen was the Kanazawa Shinkansen & the second was the Tohoku Shinkansen.

Catching the Kanazawa Shinkansen to get from Kanazawa to Aomori

Transferring to the second Shinkansen to get to Aomori in Japan.

Once we got to the Aomori train station June realised that she was not sure if she had booked the hotel accommodation, for the website she had used had crashed during the booking. She checked online and yes the booking had not gone through. Not a problem through Aormori was not busy and the Onsen Hotel we wanted had plenty of availability.

Arriving at Aomori station in Japan

Finding out that we had no hotel reservation in Aomori, Japan.

As mentioned we were staying in an Onsen hotel, interestingly enough the Onsen is actually open to the public at a reasonable price. So it was quite busy. Nige also noted that Aomori people seem to like their TV for there was one in the Onsen sauna.

Next we tried to find a local restaurant preferably iszakaya (pub food). Unfortunately the area we were looking at was full of Japanese chain izakaya’s and we ended up going to a Kagoshima chain izakaya, which was a little overpriced and not so tasty.
Again they had TV’s in the restaurant booths.

Having Kagoshima izakaya chain restaurant food in Aomori, Japan.

Walking around Aomori town centre at night time.

Everyone in Aomori used different accent of Japanese, called ‘Tsugaru-ben’. Aomori dialect.

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We then moved from Osaka to Nara. Unfortunately due to the heavy rain we had to cut short our trip in Nara.

Firstly we went to Nara koen, or Nara park where lots of deer were just hanging around waiting to be feed. Be careful when handing rice crackers, deer have been known to aggressively harass . (You can buy rice crackers for deers at the park, you cannot feed them anything else.) In fact the rice cracker vendors will react vocally if you attempt to feed the deer with anything other than what is bought from the vendors themselves.

Passing through the gates to get to Nara Temple.

Then we went visiting Nara Buddha, Todai-ji Daibutsuden (Todai temple Buddha house). It is a famous huge buddha. You can walk around the Buddhas. There’s one big buddha & other 2 smaller buddhas.

Visiting the famous Buddha of Nara, Japan

The Nara koen park is huge, you can walk around and see other temples or shrines if the weather is good.

Nara is an extremely popular tourist spot even when the weather is bad there will always be a large volume of tourists.

Nara is well accessible from either Osaka or Kyoto.

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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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Arriving at Izumo from Tokyo on the overnight train “Sunrise Izumo”

Took a bus for about 30 mins to Izumo Taisha Shrine, which is one of the most famous shrines in Japan.

It was very cold in Shimane, unlike Tokyo before we left it was very warm.

It’s said that if you pray at Izumo Taisha, you can meet right people / person, get a right job, right partner, fertile, money and so on …

After leaving Izumo Taisha, we went to famous rock at a beach and one of the old lighthouse in Japan. It’s Hinomisaki lighthouse.

This rock is supposed to have strong spiritual / life essence powers.

One of the largest remaining old lighthouses in Japan

Also there was another shrine basically same Japanese shinto god are worshiped there. The view from the lighthouse is great.

Pretty shrine you have to pass by on the way to the lighthouse.

Then we moved to Tamatsukuri Onsen (hot spring) where we stay a night. Nice hotel (was on promotion and good reasonable price), both hotel and Onsen were very relaxing, gorgeous.

Upper – View from the onsen hotel Middle & Below – Tamatsukuri onsen station

We spent the night in this area in an onsen hotel.

Onsen water makes June’s (probably Nige’s as well) skin fresh and smooth, it’s recommend for women for anti-aging and for everyone for their good health.

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It’s not so popular with foreigners mainly because of the sticky texture and raw egg, but once you get over that you will find natto to be a healthy tasty light delicious alternative for breakfast.

Eating Natto with raw egg for breakfast, pretty common as Japanese breakfast.
 

Our niece was practicing ‘Kendama’ traditional Japanese toy for her after-school’s event on the day.
 

Joined my niece’s after-school event. She was going to do her Kendama presentation here.
 

Boys’ were presenting hula-foop dance.
 

Our niece was presenting Kendama show. They were all well done!
 

We came home and Nige started cooking for dinner. He was cooking chilli con carne. You don’t really see it in Japan either restaurant or home cooking.
 

Chili con carne must have been interesting meal for the family though, they seemed they enjoyed Nige’s meal. Happy cooking, happy dinner!
 

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Welcome to Narita, Tokyo Japan.
 

We realised that June lost her Japanese bank card where our money is stored. Fortunately Nige had old travellers check, we exchange it to cash and survived apparently.
 

Narita Express.
 

We were heading to Kiyosumi Shirakawa station, where our friends were coming to meet up. Our friend was well after 9 years blank.

Kiyosumi Shirakawa Garden. Beautiful Japanese garden was there.
 

The cherry blossom was fully bloomed; very beautiful.
 

We went to ‘Fukagawa-meshi’ restaurant. ‘meshi’ means rice or rice meal, normally used to attach to another word like Fukagawa-meshi. Fukagawa meshi is used to be eaten around this area, cooked rice with clams.

Fukagawa-meshi here was delicious!
 

Then we went to old Tokyo museum. There was Edo (old Tokyo) town exhibition in there. It was well remodeled.

Not too long ago, Tokyo was like these above.
 

Suvenior shop with Edo anteak atmosphere. They sell children’s snacks as well.
 

Toilet is even Edo style.
 

Cold night in Tokyo, on the way back home.
 
 

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You can use 2 types of bus; the CAT bus and regular Transperth bus within certain area of Perth city centre.

Free Transit Zone

– To travel free, you must start and finish your journey within the zone.
– If you start and finish within the zone, you can ride the bus without buying a ticket.
– If your journey starts or finishes outside the zone, you must pay a fare for the whole journey.
– The Free Transit Zone logo on bus stops identifies the boundaries of the zone.

The free zone is surrounded by orange frame. There are 4 routes of buses with 4 different colors; red, blue, green and yellow.

You can just hop in the bus, no need to pay anything. You can board either from front or rear door on CAT bus and you can board from front door at regular Transperth bus.
You can find timetable here for the CAT bus. They are quite regular, once every 2-15 mins depends on the bus. Please be aware that the green CAT does not run on weekends.

Here are the examples of the place you can visit using CAT bus.

Western Australia museum

A free exhibition

Old library

Dim Sim at China town

WACA Cricket Ground
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If you take taxi to city it is not so difficult as you can find it in front of the entrance of the international terminal. However it costs like 50 dollars to the city, bit to expensive for just solo or couple traveller.

Then normally you try to find airport bus or train; although there’s no train or bus from the international terminal at the airport, that makes people difficult to go to the city by bus.

Only buses you can take from the airport is from domestic terminal therefore you have to transfer from international terminal to domestic terminal with using free airport shuttle, which takes about 10-15mins.

The youtube this time explains how to get to the Perth city centre with using bus. Hope this will help who come to Perth and using buses from the international airport.
 

You can catch the free transfer bus outside of the international terminal, just in front.
 

Inside free shuttle bus
 

Change to the Transperth bus at the domestic terminal bus stop.
 

Catching Transperth bus, either #37 (local) or #40 (express).The fare is $4.40.
 

Inside Transperth bus
 

The view from the bus is not too bad
 

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