April 9th - From Kagoshima to Yatsushiro

After another fine breakfast in the Kagoshima hotel

I made my way to the station and stumbled over this ingenious invention. Hot meals made from deepfrozen wares in a vending machine.

Too bad I was already full from breakfast. Otherwise I would have given this a try.

For this day there is only one topic on the agenda, namely the scenic ride from Kagoshima via Hitoyoshi to Yatsushiro.

For scenic rides JR uses sometimes nostalgia trains.
For some routes they even have steam locomotives still in operation.

The wooden benches are deliberate to fit the nostalgia theme.

One of those views or better every 30-60 seconds on average,
Japan is built from the ground up as a postcard motive.

The weather started out fine, but got cloudier and rainier over the day unfortunately.

Anyhow Hitoyoshi.

Those flowers were really eyecatching. First thing you see on reaching Hitoyoshi station.

This is the way to serve a cold beer. With pickles and a frozen glass!
I was in the cantina in the station which was run by mom type women doing a really fine job.

Japanese pissoir. Toilets in Japan are ALWAYS free (I think it's a law?) but nonetheless clean.

This is the toilet door. Who needs fucking solid doors? In stations I also used toilets which had no door at all...

After the break in Hitoyoshi there was a train change and the new one had a nice stewardess again who did all the announcements and sold drinks. The train only had two cars btw.

Hitoyoshi. A sleepy little village in the mountains. Very calming.

The new train with wooden (but very comfortable) benches.

We stopped at a couple of tiny stations where we could leave the train and enjoy the landscape.
Those small trains are diesel powered of course and it is a funny experience to hear the driver shift gears and go full throttle.

Train Mirror Selfie? Mirror Train Selfie? Mirror Selfie Train!

As already mentioned the actual beauty and the impressions are hardly possible to transport by photo. Some of the best views are only a few seconds at best and before you have the camera ready they are gone. So I mostly didn't bother to even try and instead enjoyed the landscape relaxed and laid back. This train ride alone was worth the complete voyage to Japan in my book. Unfortunately the weather got worse and when arriving in Yatsushiro it was raining cats and dogs. The evening there was unremarkable, since I didn't even leave the hotel. Originally I had planned on getting some Bashimi (horse sashimi), since it's a suburb of Kumamoto. But hey, I will do that in the north, when I have the last 5 nights in Hachinohe and do some day trips from there.