Kumamoto

We got to kumamoto yesterday (Monday 19th October) in the afternoon. We had to change trains at Tosu which went smoothly. There was a little udon noodle stall on the platform at Tosu and I had fabulous udon with some kind of potato and spring onion cake floating in it as well as the usual meat, fish, veggies and noodles of course. It was totally delicious.

Our hotel at Kumamoto is just north of the castle but our room faces south right on to the castle. It must be the best view in Kumamoto! I'll have to keep you waiting for a photo as I am waiting for Jase to upload his pictures on to Flickr.

We ate last night at an izakia called Wara Wara, they are a chain of Japanese pubs where you order all kinds of food that all go well with beer! I had Kirin Ichiban last night a fresh lager but very tasty. We ordered lots of small dishes my favourites were the scallops, pork and onions, and chicken skewers. Really good grub!

This morning we decided to walk to the bus/tram station and buy a day pass for the tram and then go to the JR station so I could get us tickets for Aso tomorrow and Hakata on Friday. We thought buying the day pass would be easy. It has been very simple to get day passes everywhere else. Not today. It took us ages to find the ticket office. When we did find it the poor ticket sales girl was totally nonplussed by my requests in basic Japanese. She knew I wanted a ticket but wasn't sure where for and when we said for Kumamoto she still looked very concerned. We had to apologise and leave.

We were both totally stressed out. We walked to the tram stop but there was nothing there about tickets We walked back up to the station and as a last resort popped into a hotel there to see if someone spoke English. We found a lovely receptionist who actually volunteered to come with us to the station ticket office and translate for us. We aren't even staying at the hotel and she was so helpful. It turns out that the initial confusion was caused by the plethora of day passes available some for just Kumamoto city some for the whole prefecture, some just for buses some for just trams and some for both! We got our day passes and thanked the incredibly helpful hotel receptionist profusely!

There were no problems getting our train tickets to Mount Aso or back to Hakata on Friday.

Tomorrow we will set off before 8 for our day trip to Aso-san. I can't wait!