What a crazy year of tours and travel it has been. In a good way, that is.
We finished the year with two Eating Tokyo tours with some fabulous guests. Then hopped on a plane to Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu.
We picked up a sporty green Suzuki Hustler, which seems to be the car of choice on the island and cruised around the back roads following our noses up lanes and down tracks. At times it was lucky our car was so narrow, and no-one was coming in the other direction.
We had nothing planned other than our accommodation each night. If you know us you will know that this is highly unusual. One evening, high in the mountains we realised the only option for dinner was at our somewhat basic hotel. The spaghetti bolognaise they served us was a sweet, gloopy mess that no amount of parmesan could improve. Nasty.
That was the only food disaster, fortunately. The modern Japanese cuisine in Fukuoka was amazing – tender raw squid with broccoli and Karasumi (dried cod roe), spaghetti with uni and day lily – gorgeous.
We devoured all the local specialties from Ariake nori and Fukuoka’s spicy mentaiko, to squid in Yoboku, oysters at a shack in Itoshima, mandarins from the hillside terraces in Kumamoto, and mackerel sashimi with sesame dressing- a Kyushu favourite.
We drove up mountains where it was just 3 degrees and saw steam rising from underground hot pools. On the coast and saw seaweed farms and rice terraces. It is an incredibly diverse place and yet we only saw a fraction of the island in our 8 days.
The speed limit off the motorways ranges from 40 – 50 km per hour with passing strictly forbidden. It did mean that what appeared to be a short 150km drive could take a leisurely 6 hours with stops for lunch and sightseeing.
Driving in Kyushu was incredibly easy, we drive on the same side of the road and have the same road rules. Signs are in English and with GPS we never got lost. Though some of those roads it took us on were more like goat tracks.
We would highly recommend hiring a car in Japan to get away from the bustling hordes and see the countryside. The people we met could not be friendlier and they loved that we had come all the way from New Zealand.
