Destination of the day: Hiroshima. From Kumamoto, we took a Ltd. Express to Hakata, and then a Shinkansen Hikari Railstar to Hiroshima station. Contrary to what was forecast, the weather was not so bad! It was not raining at all, but just a grey sky. We walked to our hostel, K's House Hiroshima, by following the tram line. This place was much smaller than the one in Kyoto, and thus it felt more friendly and human. After checking in, we stopped at a Udon res...

As forecast, the weather was ok this morning: less clouds and even some blue sky over the mountains ! We thus put our hiking gear on, and drove to Mount Aso (again!). This time, when we arrived at the parking lot where both the ropeway and hiking trails start, no more fog but clear sky ! We let the car on the parking lot and did NOT take the ropeway! We walked to the crater (15 minutes) and we could observe that a thick white smoke was coming out of it. Actuall...

A brand new kind of post on this blog: the Q&A section, which does not report facts and figures of our day by day japanese trip, but tries to put the focus on facts, habits, ways and means, situations... that we encountered in Japan and that surprised us, amused us, let us speechless...etc. For the first post of this kind, let's interest to "combini". Combini is for "Convenient store", that kind of store you can find anywhere in the US, and which is very pop...

We decided to come to Kyushu island to experience japanese nature and countryside, especially the volcanic regions. We thus came to Kumamoto which is a good starting point to go to Aso region, the largest caldera in the world, with a still active volcano in its center, Mount Aso. We rented a car in Kumamoto, in a Budget office very close to the Dormy Inn Hotel. The car they gave us was a Toyota Vitz equipped with a GPS…in japanese only ! For the record,...

For our last day on Miyajima island, it started very well with a delicious japanese style breakfast (see the post about Ryoso Kawaguchi ryokan). We checked out around 9:00 and took the ferry back to Hiroshima, and the train to Hiroshima station. The destination of the day is Kumamoto, on Kyushu island. Kyushu is the most western island of the archipelago of Japan, and Kumamoto is one of the biggest city on the island after Fukuoka. Going to Kumamoto is pretty ...