Day 10 | Nagasaki to Kumamoto

Tuesday 22 October, 2024

Missed the previous post? Check it out here

It’s raining! Luckily we prepared for this and have purchased tickets to Kumamoto by bus. Our bus departs at 10:40am and cost ¥4200 each.

We walk the bikes to the bus station and pack them away inside the terminal just as the rain is starting. As it’s raining pretty hard, we are limited to the konbini inside the station to grab some breakfast.

The bus departs right on time and makes its way to Kumamoto.

It rains the entire way! We’re kinda glad as we would have been annoyed of the weather turned out fine. But Japanese weather forecasts are generally pretty accurate.

The rain is still quite heavy when we arrive at Kumamoto JR Station at 2:25pm. We shelter ourselves from the rain outside a nearby shop and unpack our bikes. It’s only a 1.3km ride to our hotel but luckily the rain is easing up.

We check-in at exactly 3pm. There is a welcome bar where you can make your own alcoholic drinks for free. All guests are very well behaved and served themselves one, maybe two drinks at most. Imagine if this were in Australia…

There is also a bedding station where you can select your preferred type of pillow. This got Belinda very excited as she’s been complaining about the pillows at all the previous hotels and hasn’t been getting a good nights rest.

After settling in we head out towards the centre of town to grab a late lunch / first dinner.

The mall is massive and feels as though it goes for miles.

We head to Ganjin Shokudo, an elegant looking Chinese eatery that has a selection of plant-based dishes.

Both of the noodle dishes we tried were really good, in particular the Spicy Dan Dan noodles.

After lunch, we head towards the shrine and castle nearby. I’ve never seen so much signage around a shrine before.

We also notice Kumamon bear (the Kumamoto mascot) all over the city.

We wander around a bit more and decide to visit all the different arcades in the mall. Cheye plays a claw machine that has 10 claws.

We notice loads of selfie photo booths, some even with dressing tables set up for girls to make themselves up before heading in to get their photos taken.

It starts raining so we wander back to the hotel for a bit and head out a bit later for dinner.

We go to Mos Burger as they have a range of plant based burgers which are pretty good, although the serving sizes are quite small.

We also pick up some Japanese snacks for later.

Back to the cycling tomorrow where we’ll clock up a few more kms than the 1.3km we did today cycling from the bus station to our hotel!

Next post: Day 11 | Kumamoto to Mount Aso