Ibusuki to Kurokawa

Tuesday is principally a travel day.  We awoke to a howling and thundering storm, with winds that had to be gusting upwards of 50 miles per hour.  We later learned there were typhoon advisories for Kyushu.  Great.  By the time we headed for the train station, though, it had at least stopped raining.

The first part of the trip retraced our journey back to Kumamoto - local train back to Kagoshima followed by the Shinkansen (hooray!) back to Kumamoto.  Then we caught the Trans Kyushu Railway across to Aso.  While at the station in Kumamoto we were headed for our local train platform when I decided I should use the men's room before our next leg (ok, no cracks on that from either of my sons).  Andrea had used the very fancy ladies' room on the Shinkansen just before we arrived.  She asked one of the agents whether there were bathrooms down at the local platforms.  On learning there  were not, we headed back into the main station to find one.  I went into the men's room (stay with me, I am getting to the point here) and upon coming out didn't see Andrea.  I didn't think that she went into the ladies' room (because she had just used the facility on the train) and assumed that she was worried about making the train (the timing was a bit tight) and had headed for the platform.  So I did the same.  Of course when I got there she was not to be seen and I looked on the train (fortunately there were only two cars) and no sign of her either.  I headed back to the main station and finally met up with her at the top of the escalator.  She said she had asked the attendant, who hadn't seen me.  We made a mad dash to the train and made it.  Indeed we had more time than we thought as the train left late because, they said, of high winds.  Crisis averted.

Our train took us through the mountains to the town of Aso, at the foot of Mt. Aso.  Mt. Aso is the largest active volcano in Japan, and one of the largest in the world.  It is almost 1600 meters (close to 5,000 feet).  Of course, it was so cloudy and rainy that we didn't see a thing.  Not a thing.  It reminded me of the trip I took through Austria 37 years ago when I spent successive nights in Innsbruck and Salzburg and, because it was cloudy and rainy, I didn't see a single mountain!  We had an almost two-hour wait at the station while we waited for our bus to Kurokawa.   By the time we finally arrived at our ryokan in Kurokawa, we were ready to relax.  More about the Yamamizuki in the next post.