[Preview] Bike Tour Kagoshima: Japanese Hospitality in Amakusa
Bike Tour Kagoshima
Bike Tour Kagoshima: After spending some great days in Nagasaki soaking the culture in I continued my way down south. I would have to take a ferry ride from Mogi to Amakusa. It was a short ride on a tiny ferry with a few people on board and they did a great job of tying down the bike to stability. Safety is always the priority in Japan, a characteristic that was similar to the US.
Amakusa would grant me with some of the warmest memories with its people and the terrain. I was lucky enough to sleep over two homes back to back nights and interact with the people of Japan in a deep way and be treated with hospitality that I could have never imagined, but was dreaming of experiencing like the veteran cyclists would talk about in their journals while they toured around the world.
Amakusa was home to many wild dolphins and I jumped on the opportunity to go dolphin watching.
From Amakusa I had to take another ferry and land in Nagashima Island. This island had some hardcore hills that came with some stunning coastal views.
Bike Tour Kagoshima: Darma
In the pouring rain, I go into a restaurant and run into an old friendly man who spoke good English. His name was Darma. He lived in the US for about ten years where he was a professional motorcycle racer until he had a career ending injury that brought him back to Japan. Now he raised pigs and lived in a cabin on top of a mountain that he built himself. He had just gotten electricity in there in demand of his girlfriend. The cabin was good enough to live in but it was unbelievably messy. After few drinks of sake and chatting, I spent a night there but didn't sleep too well partly because he told me how he kills the pigs with multiple hits with the hammer to the head, the fact that there was no way in hell I would be able to escape out of this house on my own since the cabin was located in the middle of a thick jungle with no road. I think it was just all in my head and that had seen one too many hollywood movies. The highlight of the night in his cabin was a photo that was in his house. It was a close up of a naked lady in her mid thirties and a very old man doing a headstand in the background who was also naked. It turned out that she was Darma's girlfriend who was an artist. The way Darma casually handed me this photo and introduced me to his girlfriend and who I ended up talking to on the phone for a minute was a very awkward situation. Darma was a very laid back and friendly guy and I was so grateful that I had met him and was able to chat in English after so many days in Japan with communication barrier.
In the morning Darma drove me down the mountain halfway where it was paved.
This is a guest blog post by Dae Choi
[If you would like to read the rest of this guest blog post, please go to the link provided below, thank you!]
https://bornkorean.com/bike-tour-kagoshima-japanese-hospitality/