Journey to the south of Japan - Kyushu! #2

Day 2 - Karatsu, Nagasaki

The next day, we hit the road towards Nagasaki, making a detour towards the town Karatsu on the way. It was a pretty smooth drive on the highways; even though the speed limit was 80 everyone was pretty much zipping around at 100+km/h, even the huge lorries and buses. No speed cameras *wink*

Anyway on the way to Karatsu City, we drove through a pine forest, with rows after rows of pine trees on both sides of the road. It almost created a green tunnel.



The main attraction in Karatsu City is of course Karatsu Castle (nearly every large town has its own castle, dating back to the olden days where war between factions were common). It wasn't as impressive as others I've seen (they're all based on the same design, anyway), but the view from atop the castle was excellent.







As Karatsu is within the Saga Prefecture, my food-loving dad (or, as I like to say in Hokkien, "tam jiak gui") went in search of Saga beef, supposedly similar to wagyu. We found this restaurant at the recommendation of the castle security guard which sold Saga beef!





I wasn't feeling particularly hungry so I settled for a bowl of eel-floss rice. Tasted pretty much like pork floss. The beef was good though! Very tender, and not too fatty. It wasn't that expensive either, with the whole set for SGD$60 unlike the previous time on tour where the tour guide recommended a few slices of wagyu for the same price =.=.

Still, I wouldn't spend $60 just to eat good beef, give me a bowl of Yoshinoya's beef bowl (Japan) anytime. More about that later. Anyway, there wasn't much to do in Karatsu, being a relatively small quiet town, so we continued to Nagasaki, passing Omura Bay on the way.



We reached Nagasaki in the evening, checked into the hotel and made a short trip to the nearby Mt. Inasan for a night view of Nagasaki City. We took a ropeway (they don't call it "cable car" in Japan, to them cable car refers to a tram being pulled by a cable up a slope, thanks to Fujita sensei for that titbit of info :P).



When we got to the top of the observatory the wind was absolutely freezing, even the bunch of schoolkids on excursion were running about shrieking about the cold. I tried to snap a few photographs of the lights before I had to run back into the comfort of the heated building. It was a pretty spectacular sight.





We ran into a a pair of elderly Caucasian tourists, probably American, who were engaged in a pretty amusing conversation with the school kids, involving plenty of gesticulating and a mish mash of Japanese and English. Somehow I find that they (the Japanese) are quite intrigued by foreigners, especially foreigners who attempt to communicate using the Japanese language. More on that later.



We headed back to Nagasaki Station for dinner, and I spotted a familiar sign:



Yoshinoya!



You must be thinking, why the hell would I go all the way to Japan, only to have Yoshinoya for dinner? You can get it in Singapore! Well, all I can say is, once you've eaten their beef bowl in Japan, you'll never touch Yoshinoya elsewhere ever again. I tried it on my first first trip to Japan in Shibuya, and since then I've made it a point to eat it at least once every time I visit Japan. The beef was nice and bouncy, not dry and hard like back in SG, and the rice, having soaked up the sauce, was exploding with beefy flavour. Even the ubiquitous miso soup tasted refreshing, not overly salty.

Nothing like a budget beef bowl to end the day. Like ramen, I could eat this for every meal if I could :D

We shopped in Seiyu for some necessities (and beer!) before heading back to the hotel by electric tram. Very old school, but efficient, if not a bit jerky. And cheap as well! I'd take trams over subways anytime, although they can get very tight during peak hours.





One interesting thing about the trams (and public buses all over Japan), is that on top of the card reader not unlike our EZ Link card reader, they have a money changer incorporated into the coin collecting machine for people (like us) who have to pay in cash. Throw in a 1000yen note or a 500yen coin, and the machine will spit out coins in various denominations, always adding up to the original amount. Then you can pay your tram/bus fare. Cool huh!

Sure beats digging your wallet for coins, or even begging fellow commuters for small change (I did that before, and it was very embarrassing).

That sums up day 2! I was intending to include day 3 with this post, but after looking at the number of photos I took on that day, guess not.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S Quis will be competing in the Singapore Street Festival WOW band competition semi-finals tomorrow, Friday, 11th June, 7pm at Orchard Cineleisure. Do come down and support! Audience votes will be counted :D