Fukuoka Memories: Day 4

The day started out crappy, I found my shirt drenched and sticking onto my skin under the thick blanket. At first I was wondering, was there an uncapped water bottle near me? No, there wasn't. So I guessed it was my sweat after remembering that I turned on the heater for the entire night. So as I woke up, I found out another problem, forgetting to bring an extra pair of socks. My old socks were creepily smelly, so I walked downstairs barefooted, only with my slippers to the shop. They only sold those collectors edition socks which costs like a bomb, so I went out into the freezing cold across the street to a conve (short for convenience store) to look for one. They didn't have any either, so my only choice was to wear my old socks the other way around.

By that time, all my sweat have already evaporated out of my body, so I was quite cold. Lucky for me, the breakfast venue was warm and they had the same delicious breakfast foods as the previous night. They used margarine instead of butter, so I'll have to give them a minus point.

Bus trip up Mt Aso

So after that, was another bus trip up Mt. Aso. The winding road reminded me of Genting, but this time with much more beautiful looking pine trees and more greenery. There were also cows along the way, eating the lush grass. It was a meaningful trip.

The bus was rather small, yet very powerful. The road was quite steep at some point, but the bus still rode up in a fast pace. Japan vehicles are really good sia. It's like a Proton car with a Porsche engine

Grand Canyon look alike

Finally we reached the top and had our bento lunches there. The food was really cold all thanks to the shopkeepers at the conve who didn't bother heating it up for us. But it was still a damn fun experience. You wouldn't believe how amazing the scenery was. At one end, was a cliff that looked so much like the Grand Canyon, while on the other, was multiple mountains ranging from near to far, and a small lighthouse nearby, the improved the view so much it seemed that we were so privileged to do all that. Check it out.

After that we found out that the crater of Mt Aso was closed to the public because of poisonous gas emissions which just so happened to occur on that day. But there was the cable cars on the track that spread all over the mountain magnificently. Such a shame..

So instead, we went around the other parts of Mt. Aso like the smaller hills and they turned out to be quite fun as well. Trust me, these are great photo spots as well. So we got to see steam rise out from the ground and climbed a steep hill that was full of mud slope scares and steep drops, but each step up just became more and more exciting.

After going through all that, we finally headed back for the bus which took us back down the mountain and to home, Fukuoka. On the way, we stopped by another town - Kurokawa Onsen Town. The scenery was just as beautiful, in fact it was even more colourful than anything we've ever seen. Colours of red, yellow, green and orange cover the mountains and forests, almost like a painting done by Matisse.

The shops there also sold a variety of cheap and high quality goods, which just made us want to buy one home. The ice-cream sold there was also mouth-watering, and instead of normal flavours like Vanilla and Chocolate, their flavour was the most simple and yet the most delicious - milk.



The shrine there also excited me a lot, not because of the ancient structures and tiled roofs, but the festival that was going on there. When children turn ages 3,5 and 7, they'll have to visit a shrine and be prayed by some guy, dressed in their yukatas. For that, they looked exceptionally cute, and their parents were also dressed. So it was kind of like my dream once, where everyone was dressed up in some sort of costume.

Anyways, there wasn't any smell of incense, so I did not dread going to a temple for once. In fact, the air was so nice that it was one of my rare chances that I actually got to take in deep breaths, because the bus was just too stuffy.

Soon, it was 8pm and the bus had just entered the Fukuoka margins. We were all hungry so the guide brought us to a family-friendly restaurant called Joyfull. They gave us big servings and free flow of soup and drinks. I took about 8 bowls of soup, not miso, some corn starchy flavour. I bet most of my stomach then was filled with liquid rather than solid food stuff. (sorry no biology terms please)

Then came the most troublesome part throughout the whole trip. We actually lost count of the bill, so we lacked cash. In the end, we spent about 20 minutes finding lost money, and the teacher finally paid for us first. I was like so damn pissed.

We returned to the dormitory at night, played a couple of table tennis matches, and went to sleep. See you all tomorrow, I said in my dream that very night.