Early October Adventure--Day 1

[This is for you Devin. If you hadn't told me my blog "used to be great, you know when you actually wrote things" I may never have completed these entries---pshaw.]

For the long weekend at the beginning of October (a whole month ago now!) the lovely ladies of the Kita-Chikugo Board of Education, packed up their bags and went south to Kagoshima. The trip had three main goals:

1) Get out of Kurume. We were scheduled to leave our apartments at 10:15 am. I somehow was ready a bit early and was literally dancing around I was so excited to be going somewhere new.

2) Get burried in hot sand in Ibusuki. And buy the sand bath Hello Kitty charm.

3) Eat lots of food, especially the kuro buta or black pork that Kagoshima is famous for. I am happy to report that the trip was a success.

Here's Jamie and Allison on the train. No trip would be complete without an abundance of snacks, or Jamie's requisite coffee!

When we arrived, we went past the larger train station to Kagoshima-eki, which is laughably small and deserted for a station bearing the city's name. But from the walkway over the tracks, we get our first view of Sakurajima, the active volcano that sits across the bay from the city. We don't have anything like that in Kurume.

After stuffing our luggage into a locker, we set out on foot towards the pier and the Kagoshima Aquarium. Ferries to Sakurajima leave from the pier, and I am kinda proud of this lovely reflection picture with all the cars lined up to board the ship.

Aquarium!!! I really like aquariums, and this one was no different. It was pretty crowded, and had some really neat tanks. The first one housed a baby whale shark! There was also one full of gigantic Amazon fish that just laid around on the bottom until there was a splash in the water, and then they took off really fast. It was kinda crazy. Jamie and Allison gave an impromptu English lesson to some ladies at the jellyfish tank, and we overheard people commenting about how oishii some of the other fish looked. Must be hard to be a seafood loving Japanese person in an aquarium.

Welcome to the Aquarium!

Ewwww! You can see right through the gills out the front of his mouth! How does that work?

One of many delicious looking animals on display.

Hmmm, Jamie on display? I think this was the tank that had lots of tiny shrimp and snails in it, sort of like what one would find in a rice paddy.

The dolphin show! Which included a rather graphic demonstration of how to take a dolphin's temperature by sticking a probe up its butt hole. There was a large screen on the wall behind the tank, which is just visible in the picture below...and sure enough, the foreigners got on TV before the show started, so we had to smile and wave at ourselves for a while.

And outside, the touch tank with the standard underwater touchables, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and some starfish. The little girl's expression is priceless as she watches us act several years younger than our ages.

Next, we got on the ferry and headed over to the volcano. The ride was only 10 minutes, and the sea breeze in our faces wasn't nearly entertaining enough, so we took jumping photos...or attemped to take them. I am pretty sure the family just inside the windows to the right of the photo shielded their young children's eyes during our photoshoot, not wanting to expose their cute Japanese children to gaijin idiocy.
Once on Sakurajima, a car was pretty necessary, so we were limited to a very small area right near the ferry terminal. Luckily, the Sakurajima Dinosaur Park was just a 6 minute walk up a steep hill. The aquarium was cool, but the dinosaurs were just a bit cooler, and definitely unexpected.

The steep hill.
Views from steep hill.

Dinosaurs!

The incredibly long slide that doesn't even fit in the picture. Of course we had to go down it.

The slide was a bunch of rollers...which created some very interesting sensations. Upon finally reaching the bottom, our bottoms were first very tingly, and then awfully warm. It took a while to walk it off.

One last view from Sakurajima as the sun sets. We hopped back on the ferry and went to look for some dinner.

After dinner, we ended up at the more central train station, which was conveniently next to a large mall. We went in and out of the mall a lot that weekend, mostly to use the bathroom or go up to the 6th floor where the purikura (amazing photobooths that let you draw on the photos and add things like mustaches and sparkles before they are printed out on sticky paper) machines were located. On the top of the mall was a ferris wheel, so of course we had to do that too.

After the ferris wheel and some dessert, we stumbled towards the closest business hotel where the very nice proprietor showed us a room with two twin beds and not much else (including floor space) in it. We shoved the beds together, filled in the little bit of floor with our stuff, took turns flooding the bathroom while we took showers and crashed sideways on the beds.