I'll admit, I was scared. Scared of missing the bus, scared of getting lost, scared of...just being alone basically. I couldn't even sleep the night before--my heart was pounding and I kept tossing and turning for hours. It was so frustrating. And while the trip wasn't as fun as it would be if I had a companion, it was still lots of fun alone. :)
The sea separating the Nagasaki Peninsula from the Shimabara Peninsula. I went around like this:
From the red words (Nagasaki City) up and around and down the peninsula to Unzen City (雲仙市.)
On the 1.5 hour bus ride, I loved seeing the beautiful Japanese countryside and farmland, even though it was cloudy.
Fields, mountains, and houses.
We made a stop by a little beach town called Obama, and this was in the front:
An American flag and creepy weird statue of Obama!
(In Japanese, Obama means small beach. Just a coincidence.)
Then we drove up the mountain and arrived at Unzen. What a cute little town. Touristy but not overly so. Unzen means "Cloud Wizard" but it's originally a mishearing of "onsen," the Japanese word for hot spring. The town not only has public bathhouses using natural hot spring water for jacuzzi-like naked spas (in which I did not partake because I was alone and they were expensive), but also "jigoku" which literally means Hell, the natural phenomenon of hot spring water rising to the surface and vaporizing, along with a sulfurous egg-smell. (They have the same thing in Lassen Park in CA.)
Here are pictures from the mountain town of Unzen: the little main street, the Jigoku, some hiking trails, the main temple Manmyoji, and a shrine to the Onsen.
In the end, I left a couple hours early than I had intended to stay, because a) I wanted to hike to Mt. Fugen but the visitor center people told me it was closed, b)I was tired, having only gotten 4 hours' sleep the night before, and c) It started raining. The comfort of sitting in the comfy charter bus listening to my iPod and watching the scenery called to me.
Reasons I like traveling alone
-I can go my own pace--take time where I want and rush where I want
-I walk fast, so I don't have to wait for anyone
-I don't have to burden people with waiting for me to take a good picture
Reasons I don't like traveling alone
-No one to talk with
-No one to laugh with
-No one to share the experience with
-No one to collaborate with on stressful logistics--directions, reservations, itineraries. That's the hardest part. It's way out of my comfort zone.
TODAY'S CULTURE TIDBITS
*So I just found out that almost all Japanese highways are toll highways--and the tolls are OUTRAGEOUS. Yoko told me that to get from Nagasaki to Sasebo (probably the equivalent of Sunnyvale to SF) the toll is around $30. With tolls that high, plus gas, why would anyone drive? My bus fare to Unzen was around 30 total--and I didn't have to drive, there were only 2 or 3 people besides me on the bus both ways, I got to listen to music and chill out. It was nice.
*It's still kind of a mind-boggler to me that they drive on the left here. I was referring to Guy making a "left turn" but I realized it was a right turn--I just thought of it as a left turn because it was the big, open turn instead of the tight corner turn. So turns are switched. And the passenger seat is on the left. I always forget.
No comments:
Post a Comment