Almost Didn’t Make It To Kumamoto
Okay, so it’s around 4:30 a.m. and walking off to the station. It would have been great if I could take the tram, but they don’t start until 6:00 a.m. So, I opted to walk instead. It would have been a 50minute ride, but instead I’ll be walking for about 35 minutes. But that’s okay. Every day I’ve been walking everywhere anyway, so it’s all right. It’s just I’m a little tired still. but excited to get on to the next destination. So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but Family Mart and 7-Eleven was open. So, I was able to stop and grab some breakfast for later on the bus or when I arrived there cuz I’ll be departing around 5:30 and arriving around 7:30 before I have to catch another bus to get to the next stop. So, yeah, at least I was able to get some food. I even saw some guy jogging and a lady walking her dog. So, that was interesting at this time. But yeah, just on my way. Okay, well I’m here at the bus stop. Looks like I’m the only one here. Hopefully the bus will be here. It’s supposed to arrive in half an hour. So, let’s wait and see. Made it. our way to Taki. 3 hours and still a complete stand still. So whatever the accident was, we have to turn around, man. Let’s see where we go. Still traffic in that direction for miles and miles. You’re going to have a long day just like I have. All right. So, I got dropped off here. Not really where I was supposed to be, but the story goes the 3-hour traffic jam led me to miss my other bus. And I actually had to make a decision while on the bus if I wanted to continue there or not. But I realized if I continue there, there was no other bus today to go to Kumamoto as originally planned. And I would have had to find a way to stay there overnight and get a bus tomorrow. But the problem with that was I would have missed my reservation for tonight in Kumamoto and I probably it would have been just real hectic. So, I had to take pretty much a last minute decision and hope to find my other find another way to get to Kumamoto. And this was the last bus stop I could have used actually before it was going to be too late to get somewhere. So, I missed an activity I wanted to do in Takho, but it was more important to get to Kumamoto instead. So, I’ll have to do that now and find a bus to get there. It’s about 2 hours, but hey, it’s more important to get there today than tomorrow. I would have also missed the special bus I had reservations for or special train I had reservations for tomorrow in Kumamoto. I would have missed a lot of things. It would have been a real rough night. So, hopefully I get there with this alternative way. We’ll see. What happened? Anyways, this town is just Yamato here. Pretty small place in the middle of nowhere. Kind of neat to stop by here, but not the situation I really wanted to be in. So, let’s hope I can get to Kumamoto. So, I found the bus stop and now here I am waiting in this little cute town. Hopefully the bus will be here in time and I’ll be able to get to where I have to go. Okay, we made it on the bus. All right, good morning from Kumamoto. As you saw yesterday, crisis diverted. I was able to get by bus to Kumamoto. I got here around 8:00 p.m. 8:00 p.m. last night and had a good sleep, shower this morning. Everything worked out in the end, as best as it could. I missed out on the Takiho Gorge. I wanted to see the waterfall with the boat thing, but that’s okay. We’re off to the train ride today. So, let’s check that out later today. Here’s a little view of near the Kumamoto train station. You know, one thing that I’ve realized, I mean, I knew this from last time I came here, but I just can’t get over of how clean everything is, you know? There’s just no mess anywhere. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the cars, they all look so clean. It’s as if they’re washing them every day. Like everything is just so clean in Japan. Everywhere you go, even the rural towns, actually, I was going to say all those small places I went to just as clean, just as nice. It’s nice how much Japanese people respect cleanliness. So in Kumamoto, they have a lot of statues of One Piece characters. I think all the main ones and you’re supposed to like find them throughout the city. So they got a little map here of where to find them. Let’s see if I find any today. In case you’re wondering why you see this bear everywhere, it’s because this is the mascot of Kumamoto. So they have a lot of souvenirs for this guy. There it is. The Kawasi semi limited express. How cool is that? your seat. There’s some other parts of the train. Very nicely decorated everywhere. Very classy. benches. Got a little display here. So, this is car number two where I’m sitting in right now. And on the way back, we’ll get to sitting car number one. All right, we arrived at Oso station. One more look at the train before we explore Oso and head to Oso Mountain next, which is an active volcano. So, that’s going to be pretty cool to see. Here’s the station. All right, here we are at Oso. There you can see the mountains where we’re going to be heading to the volcano. There’s a nice little restaurant. So, yeah. Okay, that was a success. First ride done. It took about an hour and a half. It’s total maybe it was like $35 for there and back. So later today I’ll be catching the train back to Kumamoto. So that’s pretty good. It’s a pretty nice thing to be able to do. And oh, just like I mentioned before, they have these One Piece statues around here. So looks like one of them is in Oso here. Let’s take a look at it. That’s pretty cool to see. So, most people you see here are here for the same thing, waiting for the bus that brings us to Mountain. And I also just wanted to mention another thing about the train I took. I actually had a very rare opportunity to do that because uh it only runs maybe a total of 3 to 4 weeks out of the entire year. And I didn’t actually know it’s going to be running at this time, but I stumbled upon a Reddit post actually where someone mentioned that if you have the opportunity to go to Japan while this train is running to do that. So I checked the dates I was going to be there without knowing and it actually timed perfectly with this opportunity to take the train. So, that was pretty cool to take and I look forward to taking it back. Check out this self mowing lawn mower. As Homer would put it, Japan’s years ahead of us. That’s funny. Never seen that before. Here’s Oso. Another one of their sightseeing trains like the one I took, but just a little different this one. Pretty cool looking. Nice to catch it coming by. Okay, so we started walking from the terminal where the bus dropped us off. It was about a 30 minute drive up and you could have taken a shuttle if you wanted to, but I opted to take the walk the rest of the way. It’s only about a 30 minute walk, so and it’s nice, peaceful here, too. So, it’s pretty good to do that. Uh on our way up there, you can see that’s where the crater will be to get a good view of it up there. So, we’ll see how that looks. And here’s another view of what’s around us right now. As you can see, there’s a helicopter. They actually provide helicopter tours to get a glimpse of the crater from high above. Pretty cool experience. It’s not something I would do, but it’s pretty nice they offer that. Okay, here we are at the crater. Look at that. There’s smoke coming up. There’s water there at the bottom. Pretty amazing view. There’s another view. Pretty amazing. Great day to view the crater. Let’s take a look over on this side here. Wow. That’s something you can see all the time. Pretty cool to see that. Here’s another viewpoint. And you can see down there the terminal where we got dropped off. So it’s not too far of a walk to get up here. This is where the shuttle bus comes for the ones who want to pay a little extra to get up here in 5 minutes instead of walking. And another view here. Very cool. [Music] There’s another lookout. Different parts of the crater. So, here we have another path where you can take to go to another viewpoint, see some other stuff around here. So, let’s see where it takes us. We see up top here. Okay. Here’s this view where we just came from. Here’s a view over the hill, over the valley, over the mountains. Amazing. You can see the town far down there. They got horse meat here. Let’s see what it’s like. All right, horse meat. First time trying it out. Let’s see what it’s like. Okay, found a spot to sit here. Let’s give the horse meat a try. [Applause] Oh, wow. It’s good. Very good. Different, but good. Only $7. Not too bad. You saw how it made it on the grill there. Put some salt and pepper on it. Very juicy. Delicious. So, if there aren’t enough seeds, the bus apparently has full down seats. I go now on car one. Beautiful view of the mountain. Heat up here. Here’s a nice looking feature inside one of Kumamoto’s smalls. Wow, look at that. Very nice. Usually in Japan, the malls are multilevel floors, so they look more like highrises from outside. But nonetheless, very cool. See, the difference in Japan is when the malls closed, they don’t have to put down a hard metal fence. They just put up these nets so you can see how safe it is. No one’s really going to come in here and rob anyone. All right, so got back into Kumamoto from the day out to Mount Ao via the Kawasi Yamasmi. That was really cool ride. Really great opportunity to have. And now I’m just hanging out a little bit in the city before I fly out tomorrow from here to Osaka. Here’s a nice view near the Kumamoto station.
Japan Vlog September 2025 Part 2 includes moments from Mount Aso and the Kawasemi Yamasemi sightseeing train, plus how I avoided disaster.
AloJapan.com