Japan 2012: Kagoshima > Osaka

Friday, 9 November 2012

The last last day of the two week rail leg dawned a little later than Hughesy's regular waking hour, and it was around six thirty-two when I surfaced from a rather weird dream involving catering for wedding receptions while obviously working as a primary school teacher and resumed work on the travelogue. Madam surfaced shortly thereafter, announcing an intention to hie herself off to the nearby public onsen, a development that delivered close to an hour's uninterrupted tapping until her return shortly after eight.

With the train scheduled to depart at 11:32 we weren't inclined to do much in the way of pre-departure activity, happy to wander downstairs for a latish breakfast, return to the room to finish packing and check out just before ten. That scenario gave us a leisurely move to the station and a bit of looking around before departure time.

The day before we'd headed down for breakfast just after six-thirty, and found the place close to chockers. Madam's trip out to the onsen had started with an elevator ride that stopped at almost every floor on on the way down as salarymen and other guests sought to indulge in the ¥500 breakfast that seemed to be the Sunn Days Inn gimmick to attract the business clientele.

If it is, then it definitely seems to work, because when she returned and headed to the elevator to take her back upstairs the breakfast room had progressed to the point where there wasn't an actual queue but awaiting list had the next prospective breakfasted being called by name.

On that basis, my decision to tap away rather hurl myself at the shower once she'd been gone more than half an hour could be deemed to be a smart move. We only had the one room card key and I needed it to keep the lights and electricity running, and I wouldn't be able hear someone knocking at the door while I was in the shower, would I?


In any case, a leisurely morning was the order of the day, and I lobbed myself gently towards the shower rather than hurling myself into the rain room. Breakfast on both days was good deal for the ¥500, and you could see why most of the occupants of the hotel's three hundred and fifty plus rooms would be inclined to eat there rather than elsewhere.

Still, it was relatively uncrowded when we made our way downstairs around eight-thirty, hit the breakfast options and wandered back up, passing the impressive display of bottles associated with one of Kagoshima’s other claims to fame, the sweet potato shōchū (imo-jochu). Typically distilled from barley, sweet potatoes, or rice, though it can be made from brown sugar, buckwheat, sesame and chestnut, shōchū is a completely different beast to sake, though if you're in Kagoshima and ask for the latter you'll almost certainly be served shōchū instead. There are, by all accounts, hundreds of different brands, and a fair few of them were represented in the display.

Kagoshima is the only prefecture in Japan that doesn't brew any sake at all, and the spirit dates back to at least the mid-16th century, arriving in the country through Kagoshima from China or Korea. There's a reference in a piece of temple grafitti written by a carpenter in 1559. Apparently the abbot at the particular shrine was less forthcoming with the spirit than his workers would have liked.

Madam had intentions of sampling the local product, but hadn't managed to do so over the preceding day and a half. With plenty of time till the train left she could still have done so, right up to the time we boarded the train, since the Shinkansen platforms at Kagoshima-chuo have bars offering more than a hundred varieties.

Instead, having made our way over to Kagoshima-chuo I set off in search of the statue commemorating the young men from Satsuma who broke the Tokugawa Shogun’s ban on foreign travel, travelling to England and the United States to study Western science and technology, an adventure that did much to kickstart Japan's industrial revolution. I’d spotted the item in question while Madam was scoping out the transport options between station and hotel, had promptly forgotten all about it the following day but now, with the best part of an hour left till the train departed looking for it was a decent way of killing time.

Had I done a head count I’d probably have found only fifteen there, though the party included a recruit from from Tosa and another fom Nagasaki, and apparently there were a couple of supervisors along for the ride as well. They studied at University College London, and many went on to Oxford and Cambridge before returning home. Among their number was  Mori Arinori, the first Japanese ambassador to the USA and, subsequently,  Minister for Education, Godai Tomoatsu (founder of the the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and the Osaka Stock Exchange) and Terashima Munenori, who went on to become Japan’s Foreign Minister.

With that done there was still time to kill, so we loitered around the station’s shopping precinct, noting a rather interesting poster advertising a newspaper and sending Madam off to perambulate through the local delicacies on sale to the travelling public. As stated elsewhere this kind of thing is an important consideration in a gift-giving culture and she didn’t return empty-handed. Once she’d made her way back with a selection of goodies I took a turn around the same area, somehow managing to arrive in the Shōchū Store, though they didn’t seem to be offering samples.

Aboard the train we were seated on either side of the aisle rather than in contiguous window seats, which coincidentally meant we didn’t have access to the handy electrical socket that comes with said seats.

I’d been hopeful of getting access to the power point along the way since I figured there’d be a turnover of seats along the way, but while the seat beside me was vacant when I boarded it was occupied at one of the first stops by a bloke who appeared to be an academic rather than an itinerant salaryman, and when he got off in Okayama the seat was immediately claimed by another dude who remained aboard until Kobe.

Still, although it ran the batteries on the iPad and the iPod down considerably, I was able to tap away at the travelogue while listening to my own personal playlist, and the four hours passed remarkably quickly.

Arriving in Osaka the contrast with where we'd been was noticeable. Actually, it was more than noticeable, it was remarkable. There'd been plenty of room to move in Kagoshima-chuo, and the shinkansen is a fairly tranquil means of transfer, but having grabbed the Little Red Travelling Bag and made our way to the doorway,  two steps later we were in the antbed turmoil of ShinOsaka. Fortunately there was a mere one stop train ride and a single stop subway transfer to get us to the night's hotel, so we had an opportunity to catch the breath before the evening's appointment with the inimitable Diamond Chef.

That started with a visit to an establishment that delivered a range of little platters which went rather well with beer, a visit to a jazz club where Madam found the featured vocalist was an alumni of her old university. From there we were on to a single malt club and things start to become blurry...