kumamoto

went to kumamoto sunday/monday. the original plan was to go to kumamoto on sunday, get up early on monday, have a look at the komamoto castle then head up to mount aso (a dormant volcano) however... when the alarm went off in the morning and abish asked are we still going, im afraid the comfort of sleeping in an actual bed was too good. so... we decided to spend the day sightseeing in kumamoto instead.

sunday:

caught the train from sasebo to tosu about 1hr and 1/2, then transferred trains at tosu and travelled another hour to kumamoto. caught a tram in kumamoto then finally arrived at our hotel. as we walk up to the entrance realise that we are well UNDER DRESSED! has like one of those guards you see at buckingham palace... no shit! the hat and everything. he actually lets us in and it gets better, the flashest lobby iv ever seen. abish and i just look at each other in our jandals..... we're not in onehunga anymore.

once we checked in and dropped our stuff off, we met up with kirsty a cool chic that abish met at his training, she used to work for geos but quit a couple of weeks ago. went out to dinner at a peruvian place called andes, really good food and cheap. enjoying the food and conversation then all of a sudden one of the owners breaks out a little guitar, drum and flute, starts playing along to some music, sounded awesome we got some good video of it.

owner of andes.. busting out a tune

fg

after dinner we wandered across to the castle but it was a little late so we couldnt go into the grounds.

fg

monday:

fg

alarm goes off we dont get up. check out of hotel and head straight across the road to the castle. didnt realise how big this place was we spent about 2 hours just looking around.

fg

tago turret... im sure i could climb over it

abish in one of the gate entrances

main castle tower

abish and i outside the main castle tower - the other side.

after our tour of the grounds we headed off to town. did some shopping in the main arcade, then made our way to the train station. arrived back in sasebo around 8pm. it was a good couple of days and we plan to go back sometime so we can see mt aso and maybe, well since we'll be there might check out the arcade again :D

settling in

well... we've been here for a few months now (finally set up a blog!) and settling in well. i seem to be coping with the homesickness that hit quite hard (who woulda thought id miss nz??) and abish is managing to handle his kids and found a soccer team :D

so far we've been to a couple of neighbouring cities (fukuoka, kokura and abish went to beppu for a summer camp with some of his kids.. he'll fill u in l8r) but most of our time has been spent hanging out here in sasebo with workmates from both geos and nova, consuming good food and drink.

will post up some photos soon.