Day 2 Kumamoto City to Ueshima

Mar 23 • Blog, Kyushu, Video • 800 Views • No Comments

Soon after we left Kumamoto City in the morning, we came across 14 brand new shinkansen (bullet trains) lined up, and lots of media people. It was the press day, the one and only day for these brand new Kyushu shinkansen to be shown together, before their real operation start in a week. How lucky! Bicycles make you go much slower than cars, and you get to find things that you would not notice otherwise. I was so happy to see them like this, and one of the two models that will be running in Kyushu Shinkansen is called “Sakura”, the same name as my bike. I felt like I’ve met by bike’s sisters.

We were cycling towards Amakusa, along the coast. This route is absolutely amazing on a bike, and I recommend it to anyone for a day out with a picnic. Beautiful mountains on the left, beautiful coast on the right. Wow, I cannot believe I’d never been there before, when I grew up so close!

Ariake Sea is famous for its nori farming. Nori is the seaweed that you see in sushi restaurants around those sushi rolls. I found a nori farmers’ building, and went up there to talk to them. They were so nice and even let me get on the boat to look at the nori that they’d just harvested from the ocean.

Sakura’s new friend, the nori truck of Ariake Sea.

What a beautiful day to cycle and rest by the sea. I had an ice cream here too

We kept cycling and went to a ramen (noodle) restaurant in Nagashima. There I found out about the earthquake that had just happened a couple hours ago. I saw Sendai Airport being swallowed by the muddy, brown tsunami water. I could not believe my eyes – and just stared at the small, old TV screen for an hour. The news was still early, but I could tell that the scale of this earthquake was huge.

We cycled on to find a place to stay in the middle of the hills in Ueshima. The alarming sound of the city hall warning about the tsunami echoed in the hills over and over. The best thing was not to be too close to the ocean for the evening. I was getting too tired to cycle any further. We found a small shrine, and decided to call it a day. Oh boy, I would not stay in a shrine by myself for sure as it scares me to death, but I was ok since Biciclown was there. I hid myself in my sleeping bag and tried to think of warm thoughts. “I am warm, I am warm”, I repeated. It was still darn cold though.

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