This Is A Lake - A travel blog

I should thank my lucky stars, because after yesterday’s rain, today it was clear -if still muggy- all day long! This means I was able to fulfill my master plan of going all the way to Naoshima! Naoshima is this island in the Inland Sea that sits between Honshu and Shikoku, two of the main Japanese islands along with Hokkaido in the north and Kyushu in the south (Kyushu is where I just came from, where Fukuoka and Nagasaki are). The island has become famous lately because the Benesse Foundation has turned the island itself into a modern art museum of sorts, with several avant-garde sculptures scattered along the shore, not to mention multiple actual art museums that are as valued for Tadao Ando’s architecture as for their collection. The drawback is that it’s kind of a pain to get there, especially from the main cities like Kyoto and Osaka. Okay, here goes: from Shin-Osaka station, I had to take the shinkansen to Okayama (50 min), then a regional train to Chayamachi (20 min), then anot

Ah, well, I had a good run. Today tsuyu finally caught up with me: it was hot and rainy, just like they'd promised me my entire stay would be. I got incredible weather until now, though, so I can't complain! (I may still complain a bit) Undaunted by the rain, I set on my journey to Himeji. It is 90 km west of Osaka, but it's on the shinkansen line so the train ride takes just 29 minutes! And when a Japanese train says 29 minutes, it is not 28 or 30, it is exactly twenty-nine minutes. Once again, the JR Pass pays for itself (a one-way ticket would have cost me maybe €40 without it, so in practice I would have taken a regional train that would have taken twice as long). When I got off at Himeji station, the castle was immediately visible at the end of the large avenue that connects the two points. The castle is also called The White Egret, which to me was puzzling: the "white" part is because the walls and the roofs are covered in plaster (by comparison, pict

Today I got up bright and early to say goodbye to Fukuoka and take the shinkansen to Osaka! I’ve actually already been to Osaka, but my flight back to Paris leaves from there so I decided to use it as my base of operations for day trips around the region. And hey, I can always end the day with okonomiyaki at Dotonbori! I hadn’t booked a ticket for the shinkansen, so I was a bit apprehensive about seat availability, but I needn’t have worried. With a JR Pass, you can simply get onto one of the three non-reserved cars in the shinkansen. A bit of a queue formed while we waited for the train to arrive, but I had no problem finding a place for me and for my bag. The bliss of travelling by train in Japan: the shinkansen covered the 600 km between Fukuoka and Osaka in less than three hours! When I got off in Osaka, I only had to walk five minutes to my hotel, the vaguely-named Shin Osaka Station Hotel Annex (a lot of Japanese hotels have Annex in the name). For a new challenge, I did

Yesterday I had a bit of choice paralysis when I was researching where to go today. It's my last day in Fukuoka, and I had all of Kyushu at my fingertips, so where to go? Friends' recommendations and web searches turned out lots of suggestions but no consensus. So I began looking into each one: there's Kagoshima, which has a volcano, but apparently the volcano's too active right now and so they cordoned off the area because of the toxic fumes. There's Kumamoto, which has a castle, but apparently the castle was damaged in a 2016 earthquake and is still closed for repairs. There's Beppu, which has famous onsen with all kinds of hot springs, but while I enjoy the occasional onsen I didn't feel like making an entire day trip just for that (I think it's like a 2h train ride from Fukuoka). So in the end I opted for Dazaifu, which is a small town just 20 km south of Fukuoka. I did feel bad for picking such a close destination having an entire island to choose

Today's plan: day trip to Nagasaki! Nagasaki is about 150 km south of Fukuoka, in a bay, and unfortunately it is not on the shinkansen route, meaning it takes two hours to get there on a train that stops several times along the way. To be honest, I'm not really complaining: I'm already so tired that sitting for two straight hours is a blessing, not a curse! As soon as I got off at Nagasaki Station, I took a tram to go to the Peace Park. I was armed with Google Maps and I had memorized the kanji for the places I was going to visit, but I needn't worry: all the signs include English text, so I would have been fine even if I hadn't prepared anything. There are even English instructions on the tram stops explaining how Japanese buses/trams work (you get on from the back of the vehicle, and you pay at the end when you pass the driver on the way out). When I got to the park, it was about 11:30, there was nary a cloud in the sky, it was almost 30 degrees, and the sun

Today I set out to explore Fukuoka, specifically the Tenjin district, as I had a nice walk around Hakata yesterday. I probably didn't need to go at it as hard as I did, but I'm planning to do day trips for the remaining two days of my stay here so I had FOMO and wanted to cram as much as possible into the itinerary! I started by walking over to the Fukuoka Prefectural Hall, also known as Kihinkan Hall, whose main claim to fame is that it's a 19th century French Renaissance building in the middle of Fukuoka. There was construction all around the building, so it was difficult to snap a good picture of the building itself. After paying the JPY200 ticket (€1.6), I saw that they make you take your shoes off, which is fine, but they also make you wear slipper, which is not because there's never going to be a pair my size! So I had to put on a tiny pair of slippers and kind of tiptoe my way around the inside of the building. As soon as I walked in, to make matters go, an o

Guess who’s back! My week in Tokyo has come and gone, and now it’s time to set sail for lands unknown! I’m off to Fukuoka, the biggest city in the Japanese island of Kyushu. It is the result of two cities merging together: Fukuoka and Hakata, and this is why the same city has Fukuoka Airport and Hakata Station (this makes it very confusing to buy train tickets). I took the shinkansen from Tokyo to Shin-Kobe, which took three hours, and there changed to another shinkansen that got me the rest of the way to Hakata, which was about two hours and a half. It had been recommended to me that I needed to get ekiben for the train, a Japanese packed lunch. Station food, as it’s called, is not just any old sandwich in Japan, but a varied gourmet experience often based in regional specialties. I got myself the so-called “30 item Balance Bento”, which was as follows: When I got to Hakata station, I was able to walk to my hotel, the (inhales) FP Hotels Fukuoka Hakata Canal City. This was a bi