First Trip to Mainland Japan
Most people’s first visit to Japan probably involves Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka. If I had to take a guess, Kumamoto is not the first city most would think to visit. However, with the world the way it is due to COVID-19, it ended up being the perfect place to visit for me and my family.
Since arriving in Okinawa 9 months ago, we’ve been biding our time, just itching at the chance to see the rest of Japan. After finally getting vaccinated, we were able to start planning our first trip off the island. When we starting planning our first trip to mainland, Kyoto was the original goal. However, our plans needed some revisions after COVID cases started to climb across the country, and Kyoto in particular.
As we planned around states of emergencies, and rapidly growing case counts, we were able to settle on a plan which involved flying from Naha to Fukuoka. COVID cases were pretty high in Fukuoka, so after landing, we immediately got a rental car and headed to Kumamoto for a few days. After spending a few days in Kumamoto, we then traveled all the way back up through Fukuoka, onto Hiroshima to spend five days total on the mainland.
This will the first of three blog posts talking about our experiences in Kumamoto (Mt. Aso), Hiroshima, and Miyajima.
Kumamoto
Kumamoto is a city located on the central west side of Kyushu (one of Japan’s four main islands). There are two things to note about Kumamoto. The first being that they had a pretty major earthquake in 2016 that caused a lot of damage throughout the entire prefecture. For the most part, everything seems back to normal, but there are places, like Kumamoto Castle, that are still being repaired.
The second point of interest is Kumamoto’s mascot. Many locations, brands, and products use mascots in Japan to generate interest, but few can come close to the success of Kumamoto’s mascot, Kumamon.
Kumamon is a big black bear with red cheeks and a lovably-silly, if not slightly terrifying, look on his face. He is everywhere in Kumamoto and you can even find Kumamon merchandise all throughout Japan. This is because Kumamoto grants the right to use Kumamon for free as long the product promotes goods or services from the prefecture. As such, Kumamon has generated ¥875,829,010,000 or $8,159,549,000 from 2011–2019 in just retail sales.
Our Experience in Kumamoto
On this trip, we had to rent a car to travel between cities because our military COVID restrictions banned us from using multiple types of public transit. Unfortunately, trains fall directly in that category, so despite how much easier it would have been to get around Japan using various rail lines, we took the healthier option of renting a car. The process to rent was fortunately very easy. And although tolls in Japan are pretty expensive, we enjoyed the opportunity to road trip. We stayed at a hotel in the center of the city called REF Kumamoto by Vessel Hotels. It was nearby to the castle and the Shinshigai shopping area.
The hotel was nice and, as expected, the room was very small; at least when compared to American hotels. The only thing that confused us was the parking situation. We made the reservation through Booking.com, and read on the site that they had parking available. However, when Google Maps informed us of our arrival, we drove around the hotel in a circle four times looking for where the parking could possibly be. Eventually, we just paid to park elsewhere and went inside to ask. They told us that instead of having their own lot, they had deals with nearby paid parking lots where we could park for slightly cheaper. It ended up being about $15 a day to just leave our car in one of their partnered parking lots the whole time. Not exactly free parking like we expected, but better, albeit not by much, than just parking in a random parking lot.
We arrived in the afternoon and after getting settled in, we took a walk to explore our surroundings. We briefly checked out a nearby mall, the Sakura Machi, as well as the shopping arcade next to us. If you’re not familiar, shopping arcades in Japan are these long strips of roofed, outdoors roads with tons of small shops and restaurants lining either sides. They are quite fun to walk through as long as it’s not too crowded.
Fortunately for us, there were no foreign tourists in Japan, which means that the crowds were much smaller. It did however also mean that many indoor attractions, like museums and such, were closed. Also, eating indoors was not allowed for us personally due to the military restrictions. Take-out and konbini food were our exclusive choices throughout the whole trip.
After taking a quick peak around and getting dinner, we rested for the night and awoke with renewed vigor in the morning. The breakfast at our hotel was a mix of Japanese foods and your average American breakfast. Miso soup, some horse mackerel and delicious tamagoyaki were my favorites. We left our hotel at around eight and headed towards the castle grounds. Many of the roads and sidewalks were cutoff and we were a little bewildered at how to actually enter. We were worried all the entrances were closed due to either COVID or continued restoration following the earthquake. Fortunately, we found an entrance and were able to get some incredible views on the castle.
There is still plenty of evidence of the damage the earthquake had done to the castle.
There were also lots of supplies for repairing laid around too.
After the long walk to the castle grounds, we found a park (Ninomaru park) right beside the castle and let our toddler run around while we enjoyed the view. Even though we weren’t allowed to enter, we were plenty satisfied and made our way to Josaien, Kumamoto’s castle town. The castle town is located right outside and below the castle and is an Edo-themed shopping area. There were plenty of tasty foods and souvenirs to buy there. To eat, we got a Kumamon-shaped taiyaki filled with custard cream and some delicious, but way too sweet, honey comb ice cream. And there was no way we could leave Kumamoto without souvenirs of a stuffed Kumamon and a Kumamon key-chain.
By this point it was around 11a.m. We normally would have spent more time wondering the museums and inside of the castle, but because they were mostly all closed, we decided to make the drive to Mt. Aso.
Mt. Aso
Mt. Aso is Japan’s largest active volcano and one of the world’s largest volcanoes in general. It’s a little over an hour drive to the Mt. Aso Volcano museum, which is right next to the crater. The drive just by itself was honestly worth the whole trip. Getting away from the expressway and into the middle of Kyushu was beautiful. Since Kyushu is so volcanically active, there are a lot of mountains and they made for amazing scenery to enjoy as we drove.
The ascent up the actual mountain was breathtaking and the twisting turning roads were made even more fun with ominous fog hiding and then revealing different mountain peaks. The fog was super heavy at the top near the museum, which is pretty close to the crater itself.
We decided to grab some food before we went exploring. There were several buildings by the museum. They mostly just had omiyage type stuff (snacks and souvenirs meant to be given as gifts to friends, family, or co-workers after returning from a trip) and a few restaurants. Since we could only get take-out, we opted for a naan and curry restaurant that had food to-go and ate our food in the car.
Even from the parking lot we could see the 1st crater of Mt. Aso steaming heavily in the distance. Off the parking lot was a clearing with horses that could be rented for a quick trot around the open field. Despite that, we didn’t see anyone utilize the horses, as everyone made the journey on foot by hiking out to the field. We started to do the same and headed toward a hill for a better look at the crater. Despite walking up a pretty steep hill and getting a great view, we couldn’t get much closer.
There is an observation deck for the volcano, but because it’s active, the amount of toxic fumes it releases changes each day. As such, there are levels of caution that are displayed with safety lights and a signs at the toll booth. We checked online and it was currently red. So while we could have driven a little closer, we settled with enjoying the view from the hill. Also, we totally messed up, and did not bring our warm clothes with us to the mountain. Who would have guessed it would be significantly colder after we drove over a kilometer up a mountain.
While seeing the volcano up close wasn’t in the cards, the drive to and back were just so beautiful and enjoyable that they made the whole thing worth it. After we left and got back into the city, we took another long walk around to see more sites and got takeaway dinner a MOS Burger. We only really spent one full day in Kumamoto and there was a so much more to do and see, especially if we had gone when everything was open. However, I couldn’t be more pleased with how enjoyable our first stay in mainland Japan was.
With Kumamoto explored, we hopped in the car for a 5 and half hour long car ride to Hiroshima.
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