Fricking Volcanoes

A few months ago, I made a short trip to Beppu. Beppu is a spa town on the north-west coast of Kyushu. Now Beppu is one strange town. For a start, as you come out of the station you encounter a terrifying statue of a man who looks like a nazi scientist and is leaping off the podium with his arms outstretched. The caption introduces him as “Shiny Uncle who loved children”. Truly the most terrifying statue I have ever seen and as a Doctor Who fan, any statue gets my mind racing.

Beppu has many faults, not least that it is clearly a town which has fallen upon hard times. It’s run down, tacky and contains some horrific zoos/wildlife features. Nonetheless, I had a wonderful trip there. It was a novelty to try onsen for the first time and many of them were beautiful and rustic. I went with a top bunch of people and it was impossible not to have fun in their company. Finally, like Blackpool for example, you can enjoy it despite, or even because of all the tack.

Now it’s difficult to visit Kyushu and not pay a visit to an onsen at some stage. They are everywhere. Unzen itself is more of a village than a town. You can walk across the whole place in twenty minutes. It is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. Meanwhile, there are probably just as many onsen as in Beppu, but all in a more relaxed setting. But the best thing about Unzen is that it is situated in what was Japan’s first national park, so you can go on leafy walks through the forest and up the sides of volcanoes. I’d never walked up a volcano before. It sounded cool.

First, I went for a wander around the “hells” which are a series of natural features where hot water bubbles up through the rocks in a variety of unusual ways. Sometimes the water is so hot that it has been used as a means of murdering people (i.e. they were thrown into the hell to be burnt alive. Lovely.). Whilst the hells didn’t have the same variety as Beppu, you didn’t have to contend with the world’s saddest looking elephant or a hippo in a space smaller than my front room.

The hells of Unzen

Tourist Information were pretty helpful, bearing in mind that the only English word the guy knew was “okay” and the maps appeared to have been drawn by elves, but he managed to get me set on a hiking route up and down a nearby mountain.

It was a long way to the top of the hill.

Of course the Blair Witch isn't real...

It was a bit chilly at first, but the hike was a pleasure. In 2 hours, I didn’t encounter another human being. The forest felt really dense at times and the uphill slog was occasionally quite tough. But in truth, given the number of cream buns and Curly Wurlys I get through, I probably need the exercise. At the top, I had a fine view of the surrounding mountains. You could see frost on the trees at the top of the volcano opposite which, a couple of decades before had erupted killing a whole bunch of people. I’ll admit that it wasn’t quite as impressive as the volcano at Disneysea. To be honest, I feel it was a bold gambit of them to build a theme park around a still active volcano and one which I forsee will eventually end in disaster.

View from the top of Mt. Kinagasa. I got to have lunch on top of a mountain all by myself.

Anyway, on returning to the village I had to summon up some personal courage. I wanted to sample the onsen but I felt more nervous than I had in Beppu. I think the main reason for this was that I was alone. Last time I had friends with whom I could pretend I was completely relaxed and unaffected by 30 years of being told that the naked body is a thing of comedy and shame. We were all in the same boat-entirely willing and keen, but essentially feigning indifference. This time, I had to go through the whole process on my own. As usual in Japan though, I encountered a wave of friendly, obliging people who made the whole thing a relaxing pleasure. Every time I go in an onsen I am reminded that it is something which you can’t and probably never will be able to do in Britain. I always get a thrill from that.

It was a bit of a long evening. The huge beer hall was closed for the winter. Dinner was brief and silent. I was staying up late so that I could listen to the Arsenal v Spurs game on my phone. At 2-0 up, I was tempted to text K Chan with a triumphant “Oh my god, we’re beating the Arse 2-0 at the Emirates, this is amazing” text. I’m so glad I held off from sending it. 40 minutes later, I was too depressed to listen any more and collapsed in a soggy mess.

 I can't imagine any circumstances where I would drink this stuff without feeling the need to cut off my tongue afterwards.

This is the traditional Japanese breakfast at the hotel. I'm not generally that keen on rice and fish for breakfast but it does look beautiful when set out properly like this.

Idle Time In Nagasaki

 I was warned beforehand that it isn’t really the best time of year to be visiting Kyushu. Although the temperatures there are milder than Okayama, the grass was still an unattractive yellow and the natural beauty which it’s known for was somewhat stilted by the late effects of a harsh winter. In truth, the landscape, though more mountainous, did not immediately appear all that different from the landscape in Okayama. The city of Nagasaki too, on first impressions, did not feel all that different from most other Japanese cities which I’ve visited. Randomly scattered cube-like buildings of all types, overhead cables, no obvious logic to any of it and the typically beautiful transformation as soon as it turned dark.

So here’s what did feel unique about Nagasaki. Firstly, it was full of pretty bridges over the main canal, that occasionally gave it the feel of a European city. They didn’t avoid the hills when settling, so it felt like a novelty to be in an urban centre that wasn’t predominantly flat. Indeed, I definitely got some much needed exercise walking up and down the many slopes. Finally, the city has a history of trade and interaction with the outside world that gives it a slightly more international feel than many other places you visit here.

Wandering around, you could also feel that there was a limited alternative scene in the city. I stumbled upon some awesome record shops, full of rarities that you’d struggle to get back home. If you ever need to complete your Smiths vinyl collection, Japan is certainly the place to go and Nagasaki would make a great starting point.

I spent an awful lot of time sitting in cafes and ploughing through Haruki Murakami’s Underground which has been a quite upsetting read and one I’ve obscured slightly from my Japanese friends and colleagues as I was a bit concerned how they would react. But it felt like a real luxury to do a bit of sightseeing in the day and then collapse with litres of coffee in the late afternoon. I’m all for sitting around and being idle whenever I get the chance.

I shan’t go into all the stuff I saw in the city as my previous post gave a taster. I may write something specific about Gunkanjima (Battleship Island) as it’s a pretty unusual place, but my thoughts on it aren’t quite fully formed yet. It did genuinely look like a battleship though.

Full of coffee and castella cake, I hopped on a bus to Unzen for hells, spas, hiking and good times…