Getting to Kirishima was, you guessed it, a travelsty.
We managed to plan out the perfect journey, it should have taken 2 hours with no more than a 20 minute wait at each stage. As it happened we missed the tram we were supposed to get first and it all went downhill from there. From the tram we missed our first train by 4 minutes, leading to a 25 minute wait. Our second train we missed by 3 minutes and resulted in a 90 minute wait (in which we picked up some lunch so not too dramatic).
This next stage caused us to miss our bus by a mere 8 minutes. Oh and by this time the buses, which usually come every 45 minutes, only come every 90. And the bus stop was in the middle of nowhere. And it was raining.
When we eventually made it to our Ryokan style hotel, we had been travelling for about 6 hours (a far cry from the 2 we had intended) and we were greeted by the overwhelming stench of eggs. You see, it had failed to occur to me, the egg hater of the pair, that booking a hotel with an onsen, in a volcanic region would involve a not insubstantial amount of sulphur.
Despite the overwhelming smell, the place inside was exactly what we wanted. It was the most expensive place that we stayed, by quite a long way, clocking in at 19,300¥ for two nights but we had decided before we set off that we wanted to stay in at least one traditional Ryokan style hotel and this was the cheapest in the area with its own onsen. The room was layed out in the standard 6 tatami mat style with a teeny en-suite bathroom. It took us a while to figure out why there was no shower… That’s the whole point of an onsen, right?
The curfew was 9pm and by the time we had checked in and gotten settled, it was pushing half 6 (we set off from Kagoshima at 11am…) So we headed out for some dinner. The town was pretty deserted, it seemed that most things were closed on Monday evenings but we managed to find a Kirishima BBQ restaurant (basically a Korean BBQ but like, in Kirishima).
We were the only people in this restaurant and the owner warned us that there was only a Japanese menu. Armed with our newly downloaded Translate apps we boost informed him that this would not be a problem.
Except that it was. The menu was hand written. Apps are pretty handy these days. But few free ones are quite THAT handy. Luckily for us there were hastily sketched cartoons of each animal next to sections of the menu and we managed to write “chicken good” “beef good” in Japanese. Chuck in two highballs (everyone knows this word) and we were good to go.
Back at our Ryokan it was time for a dip in the onsen. I (Katy) went down first as Martin was busy fiddling with the website (and probably just wanted me out of his hair tbh).
I obviously was too busy with the WiFi when we checked in to pay attention to which onsen was which so, after a few agonising minutes of staring between the two doors I chose one, stripped naked and slipped into the deliciously hot water.
After about 10 minutes of relaxing, I heard the door to the dressing room open and, through the frosted glass, saw a figure enter and slip off their robe.
A decidedly male figure.
I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t get out of the water as then we would just have a full frontal confrontation and if it was a Japanese man I wouldn’t have the first clue as to what to say to them. I just huddled naked in the bath and prayed that I had been wrong about it being a man.
I wasn’t.
But luckily for me it was Martin. He was still shocked to see me, but not quite in the same way a stranger would have been. After a quick word with the hostess to clarify that I was in fact in the wrong onsen I quickly dressed and ran down the hall. Sadly the ladies onsen wasn’t quite as warm so I just had a quick shower and headed back up to the room to snuggle into our futon bed.
The next morning we were off in search of some breakfast and a hike. By this point we were down to our last 1000¥ so our choices were limited; Lawson’s bread bun and a piece of chicken each would have to do us.
We got about 0.5km into a 7km hike before we abandoned ship. By this time we had encountered more giant spiders, massive path blocking webs and huge wasps than we cared to count. We decided to take the road route to the viewpoints.
The entrance to the river viewpoint still involved trekking through a fair amount of forest so Martin employed a handy “wave a giant stick in front of your face before you walk” tactic to clear the path of any webs. It worked beautifully and we made our way down to the river and were able to get some pretty amazing drone footage and fun selfies.
We then walked on to the waterfall; Maruo Falls. It’s was all going well and we were finally starting to relax when, out of bloody nowhere, a crab, a land crab, a jungle dwelling land crab ran across my path and stopped right in front of me.
This is the stuff of nightmares for me.
I literally hate crabs. After seeing the one on the roof of the romantic train in Kyoto I thought it was just a fluke, some kids thinking it was hilarious to throw crabs on train roofs but no, I had to accept the terrible terrible truth: Japan has land crabs. Dun dun duuuuuun!!
We were in some kind of gross Mexican standoff where neither of us were Mexican and we were both just standing there scared of each other. Finally, I made the first move. With an almighty leap I cleared the tiny land crab and was finally safe. It was one hell of an adventure.
The view was kinda worth it….
We spent the rest of the day wandering around and taking in the sights (and smells) of Kirishima. We figured out that we could see Kagoshima volcano from where we were. We also spent some time exploring several seemingly abandoned but very extravagant onsen hotels.
We made our way back down the mountain, ready to pick up our final dinner (7/11 special and a Strong Boy each) hit the onsen one last time and get ready for bed. The next day we were off to Hong Kong.