Kumamoto / Aso - 熊本 阿蘇

We went with the Shinkansen north to Kumamoto. Borrowed a car and drove to the Aso National Park. Unfortunately, did my GPS tracking stop when we arrived at the old Caldera.

 We had an early start the following morning and took a Shinkansen to Kumamoto ("the origin of bears"), just to save some time. After we arrived in Kumamoto, we rent a car right at the station from a Toyota car dealer. The owner of the shop asked for everyone's driver license, so I took my change and used for the first time in three years my international driver license (a ugly grey note book) and put my European driver license in front of her. The effect was not quite what I was hoping for. She was looking at the license as if I want to joke around. After she had written down the names of the other three, she took my license and asked me what this is: well, it's an European driver license and the English translation and explanations, I said to her. Sorry, we only except Japanese licenses or translations, was her short answer. How international Kumamoto is! This city is certainly no example or general rule for all of Japan, but smaller cities in Japan certainly don't except or know international standards, such as the ICSI international student card or a driver license. If you want to borrow a car you better go to international car dealers in bigger cities such as Tokyo or Osaka. For me one more reason to get a Japanese license.

We wanted to leave Kumamoto as fast as possible in the direction of the Aso National park, as we planed to come back the following day. But not before we had a look into the castle of Kumamoto. I heard so many things about it: it was ranked together with Himeji caste (currently under renovation - I wrote about it in March 2010 and October 2009), and Matsumoto castle to the top three Japanese castles. Many other castles, such as Okayama or Osaka castles, got destroyed during the Meiji restoration and later   reconstructed in concrete. As I really loved the original character of Himeji castles I was soooo looking forward seeing the castle.

At the wall of outer Kumamoto - Castle

Giant trees in the park around the castle.

Kumamoto - Castle. The stone foundation is quite famous for its kind!

The castle ground was very beautiful with its wide grass (dry tough) and park lands and huge trees. The castle was also very pretty to watch from the outside and we made our way through passage and gangway to the inner aula in front of the castle. When we entered the first floor I was wondering what all the concret is doing here, but maybe it was part of some earthquake protection or so?! But unfortunately, this didn't change during our walk through the rest of the castle. Kumamoto castle revealed its true modern nature from the inside: concrete and steel. It was very disappointing for me, as I expected an amazing art of wood as Himeji castle. Nevertheless, it was very interesting to see many objects of many decades and centuries from the history of Kumamoto. From the top floor we had a great view towards Kumamoto. After we climbed down into the castle ground again, I was wondering if there are other wooden castles such as Himeji in Japan left and Kumamoto got ranked in my brain as pretty, but fake castle, except of one of the guard towers, which is still original. At leasst its original end is very famous, as the castle got burned down during a revolt in Kumamoto between supporters of the Restauration and conservative forces.

View from the top of the castle.

Cherry blossom also in Kumamoto!

After giving the castle a short visit we jumped into the car and drove to the Aso National park. As soon as we broke through some mountains I was amazed to find a huge wide plain in front of us with the volcano growing out of it's middle, surrounded by by a perfect chain of mountains of the same height. It was quite suspicious.  I used the chance when we stopped at a visitor centre to ask a women if this plain was once inside a bigger caldera, as the ocean around Sakurajima was once inside a super volcano. She confirmed what we were thinking: Once there was a volcano were we stood. It must have had the size of Mt. Fuji or even bigger. This volcano got blown away in a gigantic eruption  and the ash can still be found as a layer of ash even in Hokkaido.

We decided to get as high up as possible to the present Aso - volcano: the higher we got the more it smelled like sulphur. We could drive up to the top of the volcano, as it is still very active and the last time people got killed during a eruption was shortly before I was born, some 30 years ago. That explains why only so little people live around the volcano even though the land is perfectly flat. The yellow grass looked very pretty on the dark soil of the volcano.

On our way up to the top of the volcano "Aso". The clouds is sulphuric steam from the caldera.

View into the old caldera (Aso National park). You can still outline how huge the old volcano must have been: you stand in the centre and the mountain range in the distant is the old border of the volcano.

Greetings from the smelling mountain (^.^)/

From the volcano we had a great view into the valley, but the increasing sulphur smell slowly made us cough. We decided to leave fast and drove to our Ryokan in the mountain area north of the old caldera. On the way out of it, just at the moment when we crossed the remaining mountains of the caldera, the sun was setting and we made a brief stop to appreciate the view.

Leaving the old Caldera at it's north point at sunset!

Our Ryokan had its own Onsen and even though we arrived late there we still got some dinner of a very Japanese style (Miso soup, great fish, rice, pickles, vegetables). I finally found a place in Japan were I could see some more stars than in the cities but still not quite as much as I could see in Outback of Australia. Tired we jumped in our Futons after a short game of Wizzard and were looking forward to driving to Amakusa the next day.

We stayed in a small village in the mountain range with not much light and could see a lot of stars (first time for me in Japan).