Today I had to devote most of my time to a 5 hour train ride down to Kumamoto on Kyushu, the southernmost island of Japan. In the morning, I decided I might have time to make a brief visit to Himeji Castle, regarded as one of the largest and most well preserved castles in Japan. The height of the castle is pretty impressive. You can easily see it high above the city as you approach Himeji on the train.
After arriving at the station, it was about a 15 minute walk down a broad avenue that was directly on axis with the castle. It sort of reminded me of Congress Ave. in Austin a little bit.
Unfortunately, I soon realized that there was some construction work being done on the castle, and that it was partially obscured by scaffolding. I made my way across the moat and through the grounds of the castle to the ticket booth. I realized then that I wouldn't have enough time to really explore the castle, and I decided that I could just walk around a bit more and take some pictures. I would definitely be visiting a major castle in Kumamoto, after all.
I grabbed some food for the ride and hopped back on the Shinkansen at around 1pm to make sure I arrived in Kumamoto by 6pm. I think think I'd gotten a bit exhausted from all the walking and the hot temperatures, because I ended up sleeping a good part of the way.
I pulled into Kumamoto Station right on time, and met my two contacts just outside the platform. Okauchi-san works at Kumamoto City Hall, and Sakai-san was one of the people who was kind enough to offer to show me around town a bit the next day. We met in a coffee shop and talked about plans for the weekend, and then we hopped in a car and drove to a hospital where my host mother, Sato-san, works as a nutrition specialist.
As we pulled up, Sato-san came out to meet us along with some of her co-workers. Some othem were nice enough to offer me a gift of a very interesting snack: it was kind of like two large pancakes pressed together with a sweet bean paste in the middle. Okauchi-san and Sakai-san took off, and Sato-san and I drove off toward her place, which ended up being pretty far out on the outskirts of town. It was actually the closest thing I had seen to suburbs in Japan so far, though the size of the homes were much smaller and the density was far greater than typical American suburbs. We met her husband at the airport and went off to a Chinese place for dinner.
Sato-san was an incredibly generous and kind person, making sure I had everything I needed and offering a huge amount of her valuable time off from work to do things with me. I could tell that she was a bit weary from how hard she had been working, but she still pulled out all the stops for me. She is taking English classes, but I don't think she'd had much experience with a fast talking native English speaker like me. Communication was a little difficult, but she got better as time went on. Later, she showed me around her home, and we hung out and talked and watched a little TV before I headed off to bed.
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