Korea in about six hours

So I did get my visa waiver renewed, much to my relief. To anyone wondering, yes, I am back in Japan and allowed to stay here until Christmas.

My original plan was to spend the evening with my friend Sean, being show around some of Seoul where he's currently working. This would have been great - a knowledgeable guide to show me around the place a bit, as well as a chance to catch up with a friend. Due to a four-hour delay in my flight, it wasn't viable, since I'd have arrived in Seoul by train just about the time he was going to bed, and then been unable to get back to Busan. So instead, I had to fill the evening, and the following day, by myself.

This is the first time in a very long time I've ended up in a country where I genuinely had no idea what was going on. I'm really uncomfortable with that kind of thing, and always make the effort to learn some of the language. Even my one-night stopover in Bratislava featured a phrasebook and several days of memorising useful phrases. For Korean, I didn't get round to it. I'd initially thought I was literally going to arrive at the hotel, sleep and then fly back, so there was no point. By the time I realised it was a more extended visit, two days before the flight, I didn't really have time and I was expecting to meet Sean.

So anyway, I ended up in the middle of a large city with a totally different culture, language, writing system and shops. The first night was pouring with rain, so I spent about an hour wandering around looking for somewhere to eat before buying a pack of crackers and some apples and retiring to my room. I just really couldn't face negotiating the whole restaurant thing (complete with unfamiliar food) when I didn't speak a word of the language bar "hello". Too humiliating.

The next morning dawned bright and cheerful, which was a lovely change. I skipped the breakfast, largely due to sleeping in, but I had spotted a Starbucks the night before and decided to pop in. It turned out that they have a different selection of cakes here! What joy. There was a very pleasant shop assistant who I apologised to and then pointed at things. He spoke enough English to cope with this.

This was, as I recall, a blueberry and pecan scone with a chocolate pecan muffin. Both delicious in their own way, and I am pleased to say, sans gloopy sauce in the middle of the muffin. I did a bit of revision and then wandered towards a large department store I'd seen, since there was nothing else that looked interesting nearby (I felt that the museum would be a waste of my time due to language). Along the way, I spotted a couple of mildly diverting things. Maybe Sean or someone can explain?

One of the most egregious cases of false advertising I've yet seen.

This is not me poking fun at people's English (like I said, I speak zero Korean). I'm genuinely curious, what can "drink" be getting at when both "coffee" and "beer" are listed? With only coffee, I'd have interpreted it as being alcohol. Is it translated from something in Korean with a particular connotation?

I am perplexed.

When I passed, there was some kind of big demonstration going on around a major crossroads. Loads of people waving these banners and shouting, looking like striking civil servants or something. Then I realised it was the police, and assumed they were telling people what to do. Then I realised the police appeared to be demonstrating. Any ideas? Maybe this banner helps? I couldn't get a front-on shot because it was a massive crossroads...

Anyway, I wandered in the department store for a bit, which was about as interesting as any department store where you're not planning to buy anything. There was a small art gallery full of photos of groups of people with babies, though sadly I couldn't read the signs. It looked like pop groups or something? I wandered through the food court and got myself a salad, and then decided I might as well head to the airport. Good thing I did, too, as my travel posts will attest.

Culture Class: monochrome art lesson

My third culture class lesson from GenkiJACS was a short lesson in traditional monochrome painting techniques. I've previously done something similar in China (sadly don't have any photos with me) so had some idea what to expect. I'm bad at art, but really enjoy drawing stuff anyway, so I was looking forward to this one.

As with the previous two lessons, we travelled to an artist's studio. All of these are within a few minutes' walk of the school, and all are basically just large apartments that are used as business premises. It was a bit of a surprise to me initially, but I got used to it. This apartment was exactly like you'd expect a busy multi-medium working artist/art teacher's studio to look like: paintings on the walls, racks of pottery and supplies everywhere, and a general atmosphere of the workplace.

Unfortunately, I don't know the name of the teacher for this class. He was affable in a taciturn sort of way, which was a contrast from our chattier experience with the cooking class, but shouldn't be read as a criticism. Our furoshiki class had begun with a bit of historical discussion, but here we moved more-or-less straight into painting. The teacher had prepared some templates for us to practice particular styles of brushwork on and try a couple of different inks; we gradually built these up into more detailed pictures.

Obviously, in a brief one-off class, nobody's going to produce any masterpieces. We all came out with something reasonable, and it was fun to try doing something different and practical. As usual, I would have enjoyed doing some more of this. It's a shame that there aren't ongoing regular classes for some of these activities, so you could go along and improve and try out different things during your stay. However, most people aren't here for very long, and there's a lot of turnover, so I can see it wouldn't be practical. It would also be hard for teachers to handle having students doing different activities or at different levels of experience.

To some extent I would have liked to have more background information on the art style and its history and theories; however, this would have cut down substantially on the time available to actually paint, and omitting it was definitely the right decision given the limited time. I may look out an art book on the subject, if I can find one that's got a reasonable mix of history and actual exercises - always the problem.

If you haven't done something like this before, but enjoy art, I'd definitely recommend going. If you do a lot of painting or have already done similar things, this is an introductory class, and may not be challenging enough to be interesting for you.

Getting back to Busan Gimhae Airport

Disclaimer: advice based on personal experience in September 2014.

Maybe you're a fellow GenkiJACS student getting your visa renewed, maybe you're a tourist, maybe some kind of hilarious bureaucratic mix-up has ensued and you thought you were going to a wedding in France.

So somehow, you've ended up in Busan. Clearly, you want to get out again as soon as possible.* But how?

If you're genuinely trying to get out of Busan, feel free to skip ahead to the actual answer.

Common wisdom directs you to the limousine bus back to the airport. If your case is anything like mine, a travel agent provided helpfully-detailed instructions on reaching your hotel, down to the gate numbers and a description of the bus journey with your stop highlighted and the travel times given. And they won't have mentioned anything about getting back.

It's fairly likely you'll have ended up near Busan Station, either because you stayed in the area or went off somewhere on the underground or train, or a local bus. The main city station is a natural place to choose to get a bus, because those sorts of places have nice prominent stops and information offices to advice you. This is certainly what guided me.

The limousine bus stop at Busan Station is not part of a big multi-ranked bus point, or a nice prominent stop. When the kind lady at Information showed me a map, I eventually tracked it down to a simple metal pole with a slightly uninspiring red sign reading Limousine Bus Gimhae Airport. For reference, this is slightly to the south of the station on the same side of the road, just before the pedestrian crossing. If you come out of the station, it's to the left.

The area in front of the stop is right next to a pedestrian crossing and carries double yellow lines, so naturally the lane is entirely full of parked taxis as far as the eye can see. The street is fairly crowded with signs and trees, and another bus stop is nearby, which means it's very difficult to tell when your bus is coming. The limousine bus doesn't seem to have a number, but announces its destination on the front as usual. However, unless your Korean is excellent, you'll only be able to use this during the brief moment when the sign flickers to English. The bus also moves fairly quickly, so you'll need sharp reflexes (and luck) to identify it.

But don't worry about any of that, because the bus won't actually stop here. It's physically impossible because of all the taxis, and so the bus will sail cheerfully past. It may be that, by stepping between the taxis out into the middle of the road and waving furiously, you could persuade it to stop; I didn't have the nerve, and I'd also assumed that a bus timetabled to stop at a major destination would at least pause for a moment if someone was standing right by the sign. Admittedly, I didn't wave at it or anything, because its rapid approach and my shaky confidence meant I wasn't feeling that bold. I did check with tourist information (again) that I'd been in the right place, though, and she confirmed that it was probably because of the taxis. I didn't notice any particular outrage about this, so possibly there's something about taxis in Korea that I don't get. In any case, don't assume you'll be able to get this bus conveniently. There's only one every half an hour, so when you don't manage to get it, you'll be stuck for a while. Personally, I became sceptical that the next one would stop and was running out of time, so I decided I had more confidence in the underground.

So having failed to get the bus, how to you get to Busan on the underground?

Busan Gimhae Airport by Rail

There's a certain amount of noise about it being difficult to get to Gimhae on the underground, suggesting that it's slow and complicated. The subway certainly takes an hour and two changes. On the other hand, the bus takes 50 minutes, I waited 40 minutes to get away from the airport and was unable to get the bus back at all, so I think the underground is still looking good.

The problem you may run into is buying a ticket, because this isn't properly explained anywhere. The machines don't seem to offer the option of picking a destination; instead you have to select your destination line. You want to take the orange line to Seomyeon, the green line to Sasang, and the purple line to the airport. But the purple line, though prominently depicted on the map, isn't one of the available options. You may begin to wonder whether the blue option, which covers the distant blue line, also covers the airport line in some kind of radial zone scheme. It does not.

Information services in the underground consisted of a stray desk in the middle of the passage, looking like something that might be popped down to collect entrance fees at a school fair, where a lady was eating her lunch. She spoke no English and appeared to have no resources that I could point at. Asking about Gimhae got me directed upstairs with the word "bus". So I gave up and went back to the railway information desk and my helpful English-speaking lady.

The secret here, it turns out, is that the purple line that appears prominently on the underground map, is physically connected to the underground, and is talked about as being part of the underground system nevertheless isn't. It's a light rail line that's handled entirely separately. We might legitimately (and with a great deal of heavy-handed sarcasm) question why this is so, but since implementation of public transport is hardly cutting-edge comedy material, let us move on.

You need to buy a ticket to the green line (line 2).

• Take Line 1 towards Nopo. Note that this train will display the next station, Choryang, rather than Nopo.
• Get off at Seomyeon and follow signs, mostly downstairs, towards Line 2. In a couple of places these were a bit confusing and I worried that I was going the wrong way, as things seemed to indicate Line 1. Be bold. The first bit of the Line 2 platform you reach isn't actually doors, so be aware of that and keep going until you find some people queueing up.
• Take a train towards Yanguan, which will show Buam as the next station.
• Get off at Sasang
• It's now a fair walk up multiple escalators to the light rail station. Here you need to buy another ticket, which will be a round plastic token.
• Ignore the charity box-style thing full of discarded tokens.
• Hold your token up against the ticket gate to get in, and go upstairs to the light rail.
• Getting out may cause fluster because the token works differently here. Don't hold your token against the reader (which is what locals will do with their passes). There's a small slot where you should insert it instead.
• Congratulations, you are now in Busan Airport. And you did it barely slower, and slightly cheaper, than the bus.

Incidentally, much to my surprise, throughout my journey I found that passengers would force their way into the train as soon as the doors opened, making is very hard for anyone to get off. I was surprised because politeness seemed to be a pretty big deal otherwise. Be prepared for this and disembark boldly.

It's also worth bearing in mind that just because someone is standing with their face two millimetres from the door, that doesn't mean they plan to get off. I'm not sure what it does mean, but again, be prepared to push past or step around them to make sure you escape when necessary.

The Busan visa run, experience and suggestions

So this is sort of aimed at other GenkiJACS Fukuoka students who want to stay longer than 3 months. It's difficult getting a visa, so the visa waiver scheme is great for those who can use it. The problem is that you need to renew it around the 3-month mark, and doing this means leaving the country for a bit. The classic scheme is to nip over to Korea for the night.

I spent ten hours since leaving my flat to arriving here. Only 35 minutes of that was spent flying between the two countries. I spent about an hour travelling within Japan, another hour on the bus from Busan airport, and seven hours waiting around. If things had gone to plan, this would have been a mere three hours - slightly more than I spent actually moving anywhere. I can expect the same on the way back. I left early in the morning and will return in mid-evening.

As far as I can make out, this means that the best case is wasting two full days mostly hanging around in airports of surpassing tedium or on transport to and from them, plus additional time making arrangements and checking paperwork, and spending in the neighbourhood of £250, in order to get one piece of paper replaced with an identical piece of paper that you are more or less automatically entitled to anyway. This is an absolutely fantastic use of everyone's time and money. I try to be understanding, but I can't help caring about things like processes and efficiency, and when I think how much better the world would be if you could simply go to an office (a local office, not out at an airport where it's convenient for nobody) and answer the questions and get your permit extended, without the one simple yet vast hoop of "must leave the country" to jump through... at least the notoriously awful-with-visas USA lets you walk across a bridge and back.

I feel slightly mean disliking Busan, but so far 100% of my experience with Busan, and indeed Korea as a whole, has been entirely negative. This is in no way Busan's fault, or anyone's really. I was obliged to come here for no good reason, which never helps, and I have no personal desire to be here. My flight was delayed three hours. The first airport bus refused to let anyone one for reasons nobody understood and left us waiting for another 40 minutes, followed by a tedius 50-minute drive in through a grotty, concrete-ridden industrial suburb of the kind that always infest airports. Because of the typhoon, it's grey and miserable and chucking it down with rain, so even if I had any desire to explore the streets of a city where I don't speak a single word of the language, I wouldn't. I'm going to get soaked as soon as I step out for some food, and have no idea where to find any, because in Korea Google Street View doesn't work in about 90% of streets, so you can't scan the local area for promising eateries.* And I just discovered that a very reasonable law here prevents hotels from offering disposable toothbrushes, but I deliberately didn't bring a toothbrush and toothpaste because the Kumamoto branch of the exact same hotel provided these, and getting toothpaste through airport security is a pain, which means I now need to locate and buy toothpaste and a toothbrush so I can throw it away tomorrow, thereby undermining the whole aim of the law anyway.

*From what I've read, this seems to be for military security. Nobody else explicitly mentions Street View not working, but rather limitations on maps. But there are very clearly massive restrictions on Street view because you simply can't go to most places at all, on multiple attempts over several days.

Advice

For anyone else making the trip, I would honestly advise going one of two ways. The first is to plan an actual holiday of a few days in Korea and go somewhere more immediately preposessing, or indeed to a different country altogether, rather than taking the shortest possible trip out of Japan over to Busan. You're going to be travelling for a long time, you might as well get something out of it that you might enjoy.

The alternative I'll suggest would be to make it as short as physically possible. Aim to get a mid-morning flight and to fly back in late afternoon. Don't bother leaving the airport. Bring a packed meal so you aren't reliant on the dismal food selection in airports, and something to do for the ten hours or so you'll likely spend hanging around. This will be a rubbish day, but at least it should only be one day. You'll also save on the time and energy of taking the bus into Busan just in order to sleep and eat there, as well as the money you'd otherwise spend on the hotel and travel.

Fukuoka Airport

So as anticipated, my flight to Korea has been ostensibly delayed (I suspect it will be cancelled, but right now it's officially only delayed). Specifically, it's delayed for 4 hours. I was due to fly at 11.05, which meant I was told to arrive at 9am - I suspect the ticket agent was over-zealous, because the actual airline desk says they stop check-in 40 minutes before departure. This meant getting up at 6.30 in order to leave the house at 7.30 to reach the airport for 9am, grabbing breakfast on the way.

Naturally, the delay means I am due to check in at lunchtime, and then wait until mid-afternoon for my flight, at which point I will emerge into Korea and immediately need food again. So it goes. Or, more likely, be told at 2pm that the flight is delayed until 6pm, and then at 9pm be told it's cancelled altogether. But I am letting my cynicism run away with me.

The immediate problem is that I'm stuck in Fukuoka Airport for another 4 hours, and it is deadly boring.

Fukuoka isn't going to win any awards for Worst Airport, but it does have about as much to do as a small low-end suburban dormitory town. There are between two and four shops, depending on how you define them; these sell an array of overpriced souvenir foods, travel aids like inflatable pillows, sunglasses and a few magazines. You can also buy more baggage to put your tat in. Upstairs, there are three cafe-restaurants selling basically identical ranges of noodles, although it is possible to buy a cup of tea here. The cup of tea is fairly expensive and milk is not available - you have a choice of drinking it black or with (shudder) "coffee creamer". Are we animals? I'm also not very inspired by the prospect of getting food there, having eaten very similar things for several days last week, which is a problem because I don't particularly want to fast today. If I were in another country, I'd buy byself a snack and some fruit to tide me over - but this is Japan. One does not simply buy fruit in Japan.

Since I was expecting a brief flight and a couple of boring hours in the airport, I brought little entertainment. My laptop battery will run out fairly quickly and was only brought to keep in touch occasionally, mostly with Sean. As far as I can establish there are no powerpoints here to recharge it, which is a perfectly reasonable decision, but not one very amenable to modern society and the dismal reality of constant delays and cancellations that mean many passengers would undoubtedly find it really useful to be able to recharge their devices. I do have an ebook reader, but it's glitchy and not even I can read for six hours in the airport, then keep reading for the other three hours of the journey, then entertain myself reading in the evening.

EDIT: After much wandering, I have suddenly discovered a charging station in a corner of the airport, so I can in fact use my laptop for a while to try and stay entertained.

I'm sure there are reasons why airports don't attempt to provide more in the way of facilities and entertainment for the vast numbers of bored people left sitting there for hours, but I don't know what they are. It would help, I think.

Coming back to the ostensible point... eventually, to my surprise, we are allowed to pass through security into the departure lounge. This is where I got up to with Okinawa, so I'm still sceptical. I am dismayed to realise that somehow, this manages to offer even worse facilities than the main hall. There are several duty-free shops to choose from, selling expensive perfume, watches and handbags - some of these are fairly large and all have quite aggressive staff. I walk down to one end of the deck in search of the food court. And then back. And then back again.

It turns out that your eating options for the sole international terminal in Fukuoka are the equivalent of a station cafe somewhere little-travelled in the fen country, except that they don't sell tea (at all) or any kind of fruit or vegetable product whatsoever. There are many kinds of boiled sweet, lots of bottles of chilled coffee, sandwiches that are so pale and floppy they appear to have crawled out from under a rock and could have been sold on British Rail trains in the 1980s, pot noodles, and an assortment of snacks based on dried fish and rice crackers.

One of these stalls advertises five different hot dishes. All are marked "sold out" with stickers that look to have been there since the advent of the Major government. The other still seems to be serving instant noodles to a short line of customers, but mostly wants to sell you coffee. There is no restaurant. You cannot get a toastie, pizza, pasta salad, grilled eel, yakisoba, takoyaki, steak and chips, hamburger, okonomiyaki, baked potato, vegetable stir-fry, spare ribs, stew, or anything other than an instant noodle dish even when they are in stock. This despite the fact that customers have nothing else to do for around two hours apiece, and that restaurants in the departure lounge have a captive audience. The Japanese passengers sit impassively around the lounge playing with mobile phones, giving every appearance of having embarked on a determined fast. Only one young man nearby dares to buck the trend and devour a pot noodle.

Having had my fill of ramen, udon and other quickfire noodle-based soup dishes recently, I rebel at the prospect of buying a rather shoddy-looking version to eat for yet another meal. I eventually manage to track down a lonely shelf of orange juice and plonk this, plus three Snickers (or rather, Soccers, since we seem to have exported a massive surplus to Japan and that's all they have here). The cashier looks at me oddly, but clearly perceives a cold rage within me and says nothing.

If for some reason you have to use Fukuoka airport, be aware that it is an extremely boring place, and has a fairly meagre food and drink options. So far 100% of my flights here have been delayed (due to small sample size, p is large). Prepare accordingly. This is to say, bring a hamper containing two entire meals, paying particular attention to fruit and vegetables, as well as several books and a small chamber orchestra.

Typhoon Travelling

One of the problems with Japan is typhoons. It's unfortunate, then, that the halfway point in my stay, the expiration date of my visa waiver, and my half-term holiday coincide with peak typhoon season, because all three of those are reasons why I want or need to be travelling.

Although nothing was said about it at the time, I suspect the problems with my flight to Okinawa were not unrelated to typhoons, either directly or indirectly. Certainly some other attendees were delayed by the typhoon.

Today I'm due to fly to Korea in order to re-enter Japan and get a new 90-day permission to stay. It's a bit of a farce to be honest, wasting a lot of time, money and effort both for the visitor and for the Japanese authorities. I'm not sure why, if you're allowed to renew once and once only, they don't just track that separately and not bother making you nominally leave the country for a few hours at great expense. However, I assume this is something lots of countries do and there's some kind of reasoning behind it.

Shortly after the agency had booked my tickets, my friend Sean in Korea piped up that maybe we could meet up. We worked out it was just about possible - unfortunately my flight was arranged to Busan, the closest city to Japan, rather than anywhere near Sean. But assuming a seamless journey between the plane flight, shuttle bus, high-speed train and local bus in both directions, it would be possible to meet up for a few hours after work and catch up on things, as well as get a very brief introduction to Korea. From one point of view, this would involve spending 19 hours travelling to spend 3 hours with Sean, but the majority of that is the obligatory section of getting from my apartment into Fukuoka, then out to the airport, over to the international terminal, to Korea, and from Busan Airport into the city.

Anyway, on arrival on the airport I was immediately told that my flight would be either delayed or cancelled due to a typhoon, so either way the meeting is off this time. While I by no means want to get the trip cancelled (both because I need a visa, and because I'm already at the wretched airport and have already had one wasted trip here), on the plus side, if it does get cancelled I may be able to arrange a better scheme to see Sean.

Mooching in Kyushu: Kurume and Kusano

Some days of my life are odder than others.

Yesterday, I stayed in a hotel with a free coffee machine, laundry facilities and massage on demand (although I'm glad to say the latter two were pay-on-use as wouldn't dream of paying for a hotel where they were covered by the room charge!). I did in fact use all three of those. Tonight, I am sleeping on rushes in a bare room that doesn't have any of those, nor an en-suite bathroom, nor indeed running water or internet. Entirely against my intentions and plans, I have ended up in a ryokan.

I began the day by grabbing some breakfast at my hotel (Toyoko Inn), which I can report as a perfectly comfortable place, fairly cheap, which could nevertheless do with a few more watts in its lightbulbs. They offered both Japanese-style and Western-style Continental Breakfast, which was very promising. I quickly discovered that this meant you could get orange juice, toast and jam to accompany your rice, miso soup, three kinds of vegetables, two meats and two tofus. After downing some orange juice and a slice of bread, I sloped upstairs to drink coffee and eat some fruit I'd bought the day before. Then I wandered over to the station for a cuppa before hopping on the train to Kurume.

Arriving in Kurume, I headed for tourist information. There were a few things in Kurume that seemed potentially interesting, but browsing through the pamphlets I noticed something with a self-guided walk through some part of town I couldn't track down on the map. Approaching the information desk, I somehow managed to immediately befriend the lady on the desk, YM-san, scoring another win for having actually learned some of the local language before turning up somewhere with complicated questions. You think I kid, but I ended up with a mound of pamphlets, a hotel booking despite it taking five attempts to find somewhere, a painstakingly hand-annotated version of the walking map showing which of the historic sites would be most accessible to foreigners and the prettiest route to take at this time of year, a personal recommendation for where to get good ramen for lunch, and her email address.

YM-san was very very helpful, and perfectly willing to help me book a hotel. She clearly recognised me for an indigent student and helpfully suggested the cheapest possible places. This led to her phoning somewhere very cheap and remote, with instructions that although it wasn't near this station, I could make my intended visit to a smaller town a few stations away, then get the bus back to fairly near this cheap hotel, and then tomorrow I could go to a different station on a different railway line run by a different company, and use that to travel back to a different part of Fukuoka. It sounded a bit terrifying. I was very relieved to hear the hotel was full, and persuaded her that I didn't mind paying a few quid more to make my life a bit simpler.

Unfortunately, most of the hotels are apparently near the aforesaid other station, for some reason. The best options near my station were full, and soon it was down to a choice between hoiking my stuff across town and doing complicated bus-based journeys, or else giving in and trying a ryokan. Having established that I would in fact have a room to myself, I gave in.

Anyway, this walk turned out to be in the east of the city, several stops away on the local train. For some reason I decided this was still appealing, since it looked like a more rural, green sort of place than anywhere I'd been so far. YM-san was enthusiastic that I should run for lunch and then rush straight off to this town, Kusano, on the train due shortly, but as I'd only just arrived and it was only 11.30 I quietly rebelled and went for a brief stroll instead. There wasn't a huge amount to see where I went, as the immediate environs of stations tend not to be that interesting, but I did find one old house with a sign indicating it had some indecipherable historic significance. I then went to the suggested ramen place, since it was easier than deciding for myself, plus convenient, plus I'm always scared people will cross-examine me about whether I actually took their suggestions and I will be crushed with guilt. In this case, YM-san was quite right, it was pretty tasty.

The station featured an interesting clock, though I was never around to hear it perform some trick it apparently does.

The train to Kusana was an old yellow diesel. I'm still getting used to the juxtaposition of styles in Japan, which contradicts a lot of what's presented. Some things are very sleek and high-tech, and some things (although very few) are old and traditional, but there's a surprisingly strong trend of what I can only describe as military-brutalist architecture and design. That's not meant to be an insult, it just seems the most appropriate term. Stark concrete, square lines and machinery not covered up to save sensibilities. This makes the whole place look quite distinctive to me, despite having most of the same things going on as Britain, on the whole. It's taken me a long while to realise this, but for a Brit, the amount of things made from brick seems very limited: concrete, tiled concrete or corrugated iron seem to be the materials of choice. And of course, there's none of the Georgian or Edwardian styles that most British towns feature in at least some public buildings.

Obligatory snaps for the train-fanciers in our audience.

Kusano was pleasantly quiet, although this effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that you have to walk along the one main road to get anywhere, and this was quite busy. Japan doesn't like pavements much, so walking by busy roads is always a bit offputting for me. However, it's a lovely change from the inner city. Most buildings were only one or two stories, allowing me to actually see views most of the time, and it's an agricultural area with vast sweeps of orchards everywhere. I saw ripening fruits and an array of startling insects. These included butterflies the size of my hand, and I was very sad that none of them would land so I could take their photo.

There were also glittering black-and-gold spiders of about the same size. I include this line as a heads-up to any spider-haters in the audience that a picture of the spider will follow shortly.

If you don't like big spiders, you should probably skip ahead now.

Okay?

Big spider.

Kusano has a slightly esoteric collection of interesting places, and I wasn't entirely sure what most of them are. I was somewhat hampered by the walking map, which turned out to be deceptively scale-free, apparently inspired partly by the London Underground map, and also missing the odd minor road. As a result I ended up taking several wrong turns into dead ends and wasting some time, including walking quite a long way up a hill at one point. Still, it's all good exercise and I got some nice views.

I eventually tracked down the first major landmark, the Kusano History Museum, which let me recalibrate my map and navigate better from then on. Since I knew nothing about the Kusano clan and would be unable to read (or photograph) their collection of ancient manuscripts, I contented myself with looking at the outside.

Similarly, I paid only brief attention to the temples and shrines, on the grounds that I've seen half a dozen of these so far and to the uninitiated they seem much the same. With an interested guide I'm sure I'd appreciate them more, but personally I can't read anything like as much from them as I can from more familiar Western architecture.

My first real stop was at the Yamabenomichi Cultural Museum, a large blue building that felt slightly offputting when I entered. Despite the welcome sign, it felt like I'd just wandered into a primary school or something. There was no actual reception desk, although a woman popped out of an office and waved me in; after that I wasn't at all clear where I was, which parts of the building were actually open, or whether I was going to be walking into restricted areas. It seems like most of the building was display space when I did get round to braving it, and at this point the lady did come in and sort of hang around, making occasional remarks. I think we probably both felt equally embarrassed, since she didn't have much to say beyond pointing me at some pamphlets about the area and awkwardly rearranging things for a while until I moved to another room.

There were some masks and other items that seem to be for use in festivals, a small exhibition of paintings, and another room upstairs with loads of postcard-like things. One of the reasons I'd come here was that YM-san had recommended the cafe, so I duly went inside, but once again found nobody there. It was clearly open, and they had menus lying around, but though I sat and mused for ten minutes or so, nobody ever turned up, so I left. In fact, I would be entirely unable to get a drink nor a snack in Kusano. This was a great shame, because it was a lovely peaceful place, and if I'd been able to stop for the occasional cuppa I'd probably have spent even longer wandering round enjoying the sights.

Just a couple of general glimpses of the town.

This looks like a portacabin, but seems to be a house, possibly made from shipping containers. It's very prefabby, anyway. Given the number of cars, maybe it's some very cheap flats?

This (上野武則邸) was the house of the head of a medical shop, the Ueno family. This kind of elaborate gateway is apparently unusual, especially in this area. It was probably associated with a very formal reception room, to give a grand impression to customers (from the guidebook - I didn't make that up). You can see more pictures at this blog, which I found entirely at random by searching for 上野武則, but turns out to belong to YM-san from the information office! Small world.

My plan was to generally wander around the town and look quietly at things, rather than particularly to view anything specific. I passed a couple of things that were probably quite interesting if one only knew what they were. I discovered that the next major landmark was something that looked like a garden centre and had a flower-related name. Aha! thought the British brain. Surely, if there is anything one can be confident of in this world, it is that a garden centre must necessarily feature a cafe, as well as birthday cards, strange spirally ornaments, soft furnishings, CDs of classic ballads, pets, and possibly even some garden plants.

This turned out to be incorrect, as the building was in fact the Kurume Camellia Garden visitor centre. This seems to be a kind of botanical collection showcasing camellia species. In fact, the building turns out to be only a small part of a much larger whole; the main display is an extensive park up the hillside with about 2,000 specimens of 500 species. I wandered inside and was soon approached by a mildly anxious-looking staff member (a theme in my tour) who was very pleased to realise I could speak enough Japanese to have a conversation. In fact, I should point out that I only understand about a quarter of any given conversation, but thankfully I have spent seven years working in a library full of philosophers and theologians, so I'm entirely used to that.

The Camellia Lady (as I don't know her name) kindly explained a little bit about the place and showed me some of the carmelian products they sold - I actually intended to pick something up, but ended up getting distracted, as we will see. The boss also stepped out to greet me, and I was pleased to discover that (like everyone else I've met) he could immediately associate "Liverpool" with the Beatles. He even gave me a badge made from a carmelian pod. When the conversation dried up, I sloped out to the closer bit of garden, intending to have a poke around even though very little was in flower.

A couple of minutes later, I was hunted down by two of the staff so I could pose for a photo with them and one of the precious few remaining flowers. I have a suspicion that I may end up in some kind of brochure as the token multicultural, which mildly entertains me. A smaller hope remains that I will feature spuriously as some kind of visiting camellia expert, because that would be hilarious. If anyone visits and finds my picture, do let me know!

Sorry about the quality, but it's a photo of a photo.

Since I don't have many photos with myself (it's hard to take them) I thought to ask if I could leave them my email address and get a copy sent. What actually happened was that I came back to the desk after wandering round, and was presented with an A4 full-colour printout of the photo. This was very nice of them, but a bit inconvenient because I'd only brought a tiny manbag and had no way to carry it. I didn't have to mention this, because Staff A immediately started tracking down a folder for it. Then Staff B produced a paper envelope, and inserted the whole in that, and then realised there was a plastic bag and added that to the mix. The bag was a bit small, so Staff A then scurried around the office and located a pack of larger plazzy bags. Meanwhile, the boss was doing something enigmatic at the back, and suddenly produced a photo print of the picture as well. This was duly added to the mix. Somewhat overwhelmed, though very charmed, I left them my email address and extracted myself to go and view the main gardens uphill. Naturally, I did this by first walking back out of the main door, then realising my mistake and doing an about-face back through the hall with an awkward wave.

I didn't have that much time left and had already climbed quite a lot of hill today, but I did make it up to the garden. This part of the day was slightly nerve-wracking, because I was nervous I'd accidentally wander into someone's personal garden or orchard by mistake due to not being able to interpret all the signs. Having eventually tracked down the entrance, I wandered inside. Unfortunately, as it was out of season, it was basically a parkfull of greenery with nary a bloom in sight.

It would undoubtedly be quite a nice place for a peaceful wander at any time of year, but I decided to cut my visit short after ten minutes or so, and hurried on back down the hill and through town, arriving just in time for a train. This would give me time to rest a bit at the station before heading to my hotel for check-in.

There are quite a lot of small shrines dotted about the hillside, as well as graveyards.

My plan was to stop at the station cafe for a much-needed cuppa after nearly five hours of wandering through towns and up hills in warm weather. This was cruelly foiled by the station's dastardly plan of not having a cafe. I can only boggle. As I would later discover, there is one a couple of minutes down the road, but I didn't know that at the time. I sat for a while trying to use the station internet to look up the locations of cafes, since this dearth coupled with not having seen any on my earlier walk left me paranoid. This was duly foiled by the station internet being about as functional as a Public Private Partnership, and I gave up and schlepped my stuff (thanks again, station lockers!) over to the ryokan.

After heading in entirely the wrong direction for a few minutes, thanks to walking out of the wrong station exit, I tracked down the building and was welcomed by a nice landlady. She showed me up to my room, where tea accoutrements were laid out along with a yukata for my use. I had that much-needed drink and rested for a while, slightly puzzled by not having been asked to sign in. After a while I headed downstairs and managed to attract her attention long enough to ask about registering, which is a legal requirement, especially for foreigners. For reasons I don't fully understand she didn't take my passport details, but she did give me the paperwork. There was a lot of confusion over my name, which I wrote out and then she started rewriting in the wrong order in the belief that I had messed up, but eventually this was resolved.

Ryokans are Japanese-style traditional hotels, although they vary in how traditional and formal they are - at my end of the market it's not that different from a B&B run by a nice retired couple from Dorset. I'd seen some ryokan-like places advertised where you basically had a fenced-off area within a common room, a sort of ryokan youth hostel, which really didn't appeal. YM-san described this one using a special term, probably minshuku, and I initially thought she meant that kind of hostel, but I think it has more to do with it being a smaller, homey sort of place with all the facilities shared. Much cheaper to build, presumably. Essentially you are just getting a room with a tatami mat floor, a small table, a TV and a yukata (basically a dressing gown). It's quite nice actually.

The downside is, of course, that without internet my options for entertainment were limited. I couldn't properly write a blog, check or write emails, or do any research on things to do in the evening. I ended up going to Kentucky Fried Chicken (yes, I know, but I had a massive apple later) so I could use their internet to at least do some quick things. In the evening I strolled round town, hoping to find some kind of chain cafe where I could drink coffee and surf the web, or at least sit down; the ryokan only provided a jug of hot water for tea, which would in no way keep me going for four hours. Kurume seens to be almost entirely devoid of such cafes, which meant I wandered around for two hours getting exercise but not achieving much. This would have been more welcome if I hadn't spend most of the past three days walking around towns!

On the definite plus side, it's cool enough just now in this part of Kyushu that I genuinely enjoyed it, rather than collapsing into a melting heap. There was even a brief moment where I was actually chilly. It was great.

Morning of the 21st

As I had no internet, I didn't get round to putting up the Kusano blogpost until the 21st. My original plan was to spend the day in Kurume and area, then take the evening train back to Fukuoka.

For breakfast, I went to that cafe near the station, a place called Trandór. It's very nice actually. There's an array of interesting baked goods, which I sampled a couple of, and they do reasonable tea and coffee. Usefully, I was also in reach of the internet from KFC next door. I sat here for a while checking things and writing emails. Since I'd left the ryokan at 7.45am for want of any better ideas, this seemed like a decent use of time, and I got a couple of drinks down me.

I decided after some thought that I'd pass on the delights of Kurume itself. I'd seen a certain amount of the place last night, and nothing had really jumped out as interesting. The map showed a couple of temples, several parks, and a couple of museums. While in the general way I'd happily go to any of those, most were three miles or so from the station, so I'd have to do quite a bit of walking to get there at all, in order to walk around some more. I could go and research buses at the station, but I wasn't really inspired enough by any of the options to feel like that was worth the effort - and travelling around strange towns on buses is usually pretty stressful.

I'd had some thought of visiting another nearby town, Yufuin, but being short on sleep I lacked enthusiasm, and I believe it's mostly dedicated to onsen (hot spring baths) anyway. The extra time on the train didn't particularly seem like a great investment. In the end, I decided to cut my holiday short a few hours early and just hop on the train back. So ends the First Great Kyushu Mooch of 2014.

And now for the obligatory cake review section. As I hadn't booked breakfast at the ryokan, I ate at the aforementioned coffee shop.

Choc Chip Bun: Nice faintly-crisp outer texture, and a pleasing balance of dough and chocolate. A mild chocolate filling (perhaps a hint of orange?) was neither squidgy nor sickly, and the whole turned out surprisingly unsweet, making it a very suitable choice for breakfast. It had a nice texture, easy to bite into, which didn't stretch or squash too much. Would eat again.

Cinnamon Raisin Bun: Pleasant enough, but lacking punch. A fairly soft cake, with a nice glaze and sugared with a very minor dash of lemon. If this did indeed contain cinnamon, it can only have been in homeopathic quantitites. The raisins were large and plentiful, but the whole was somewhat bland, although perfectly acceptable. I'd cheerfully eat another one, but it wouldn't be my first choice.