Kyushu Adventures

After returning home from Thailand, Samantha’s parents still had some vacation time, so we decided to show them a few things around Kyushu.  

Of course we took them to many of our favorite places in Kurume, but we also went on a couple of road trips.  One of the first was to Nagasaki.  Last time we were there (April 2011) we didn’t get a chance to see the Atomic Bomb museum, boy did we miss out.  We haven’t been to the Hiroshima museum yet, but this was quite nice and informative.  So much craziness involved with the history of nuclear weapons.  I highly recommend everyone to see the movie Countdown to Zero a doc. movie all about ridding the world of nuclear bombs.  

Also in Nagasaki we randomly ran into various floats and families honoring their ancestors.  That’s right it was Obon festival, but Nagasaki style.  Shoro Nagashi, is extremely unique to Nagaski with various neighborhoods making their own little celebration on the streets then eventually meeting up at night for a downtown large parade.  Meanwhile throughout the entire day there are hundreds, no thousands, of fireworks going off.  Mainly just firecrackers being thrown around, but it starts to sound like a gang war here and there.  *note Nagasaki has a Chinatown, which contributes to this*  It was quite the spectacle and we were happy to have seen this.

The next day we went travelled down to Kumamoto.  We began heading in to the Mt. Aso National Park, but then came torrential typhoon rain.  It was so hard to drive in so we drove right back towards the city but over the mountain.  Magically the clouds vanished and revealed giant windmills and a view of the Kumamoto valley.  We eventually get down the main city and visit the castle.  This castle is in the top 3 most important castles of Japan.  The outside walls were designed definitely to keep enemies out, how they did this baffles me.  But not only were the outside walls neat, but the inside walls of the castle palace were covered in magnificent gold leafed art work.

We had a great time with the parents showing them some of our favorite hikes, stores, and restaurants.