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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Ibusuki, Japan

指宿市

I was about to head to the campsite to meet the rest of the riders, when this rad old dude starts staring at me.

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I exchanged some pleasantries, then he just busts out, in Japanese, "There's a bunch of big, red koi fish in the river!" Awesome. So we chatted about fish for the next 5 minutes, until a woman, maybe his daughter, came out of a nearby house. She yelled at him to come back inside, "He doesn't understand you!" Then looked at me, realized I can speak enough Japanese, pointed at her head and did the universal symbol for crazy. It was kind of a dick move on her part, as rad old dude just wanted to tell me about the fish.

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Speaking of fish...

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I ate some for lunch.

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This was a locally famous somen nagashi restaurant. What's somen nagashi?

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Noodles that are perpetually moving downriver, waiting for you to grab them with your chopsticks. The logistics of actually having a ton of noodles flowing down a river is an easy fix, just build a round aquarium and hook up some water pumps.

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But Ibusuki is most known for one thing, the hot sand baths.

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Lie down, and a friendly fella will bury you alive. The steam from down below turns your sandy tomb into a sauna. Fresh!

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As always, a group of a dozen Westerners will gravitate towards the barbecue. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be continuing on with the group. One of my interests in Kyushu was visiting Yakushima, an interest no one else shared with me.

So the next morning, I said goodbye to the group, and headed 60km north to Kagoshima port.

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Great roads, with views of some massive fossil fuel tank area.

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Dropped the bike off at a tire shop. Think I need a new one?

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Paid way too much for a tire, and way to much for a 2 hour ferry, and set off into the sunset.

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Which had a nice color due to the exploding volcano behind.

Up Next: The land that inspired Princess Mononoke.

3 comments:

  1. Just wanted to say that you have an awesome site here Brian. I have been reading for a while after finding a link on another site and have been hooked ever since! Loving your travel diaries the most, can't wait to see more!

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  2. Thanks Adam, I'll keep it up. By the way, this blog started the day I left the video game industry...

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  3. Oh interesting, I think I did the reverse to you then. I joined the games industry in Japan then came back to the UK to further my career in it. (Now working at a large Japanese developer and starting my own games company as you must have seen from my site link)

    However since my dream of joining the games industry has been fulfilled I have a new dream of leaving it forever and running back to Japan! :D Glad to see it can be done.

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