Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ In Spoons

I'm continually surprised by what lies within an hour drive of my humble abode here in Kusu and how I seem to have overlooked this and that for so long. Case in point, two weeks ago when Maia and I randomly pointed CarTrain (yes, that's my car's official name...a story for another time) towards Nakatsu to see what we could find along Route 212. I've been up and down the road at least three times, but always going somewhere at one extreme end or another and never stopping at much more than a convenience store along the way.


The washed out sign on the pylon tells riders not to sit sidesaddle. Hear that, Maia, you rule breaker!

We stopped off at the town of Yabakei's michi no eki that was inexplicably called "Yapatopia" for a lunch of handmade soba noodles and continued on down that side road to the amazing Rakanji, a Buddhist temple I'd never heard of and that nobody in Kusu seems to have heard of either. Really, I raved about it the following week and everyone scratched their heads. Whatever, we found it and, and...proceeded to scratch our heads at the ski lift we were presented with. Apparently the temple was so far up the hill and nobody could be bothered to climb it so they built the lift. Excessive, but who was I to argue when it was pushing 90 outside. Getting off at the first of two lift stations we found a shack masquerading as a greasy spoon snack stop that we both agreed to be the single shadiest eatery or approximation of one in all Japan. If the cockroaches there didn't get you then the precarious cliff side perch would when that goes.


It's like a strict mom's heaven or a brat's worst nightmare. Our spoon is just off to the left of this shot. Next, the pagoda thing carved out of a grotto. Magnificent!

If one can resist the charms of that snack stop you'll find a gorgeous rock arch that acts as a sort of natural gateway to Rakanji itself, a temple carved into a cliff face overlooking the entire valley. Stunning hardly begins to describe it. There are thousands of carved Buddha statues of various shapes and sizes lying around everywhere, water cascading down the cliff at various places from some unknown source above and countless spoons hammered into anything made of wood. Yes, spoons. Neither of us could decipher the religious script to understand what the spoons were all about, but we bought one and left our own sage wisdom to the ages. No, you don't get to see what we wrote. Past that was a squat pagoda of sorts and some other temple structures, a vista point and a mountainside garden.


Yes, we both enjoy a good castle keep, but cats...we liked them more.

Since we'd paid for the ticket we rode the lift to the top of the mountain, but found nothing of note there and it had started to rain in a classic Japanese kitsune yomeiri ("Fox's Wedding") sudden summer shower, so we hightailed it out of there. Next stop: Nakatsu and hands down the best Indian restaurant in Oita Prefecture and possibly all of Kyushu. But before that we made a little stop over at Nakatsu Castle, a jewel of a keep that, while rebuilt and remodeled, is still nonetheless a sight to behold. Alas, the castle was no match for the rather large family of stray cats living just outside the gates also competing for our attention and we ended up spending most of the time feeding them and trying to catch them to take to our underground make-up testing...I mean, to cuddle and cherish. The Indian we had for dinner capped off a day I thought would be pretty humdrum, but turned out instead to be full of surprises. This prefecture's still got some tricks in her yet, no matter what the naysayers might mutter.

--Matt