Tricks Up Her Sleeve

Wednesday was Showa No Hi, the annual holiday honoring the Showa emperor, and Maia and I took advantage of it to explore a neglected (by me) part of the prefecture and chill out from the bad-then-good events of the day before. The holiday's was smack in the middle of the week this year for maximum annoyance, delivering the tease of a weekend and then slapping you in the face with the fact that yes, indeed there is work tomorrow. Bastards.

The day before began with me participating in Kusu JHS's ensoku field trip to the top of Mt. Kirikabu. It wasn't pretty, but what do you expect when you put two hundred screaming kids on a march up a mountain? I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say it was a crap cake with sprinkles on top—dealing with the fighting, bullying, littering on and eroding of a wonderful mountainside, plus the general shenanigans that kids get up to was taxing to say the least. When the rain and thunder came to scare us all away I was thankful to have the field trip cut short, but secretly hoping we'd stay and raise the chances one of the demonic kids (not the good ones) would become a pile of lightning-induced ash. A man can dream.

Later on Maia and I tore out of Kusu and headed to Oita for a performance by our friend, Rie, supplier of fine Kyushu-designed shirts and general mirth. First, though was dinner at our new favorite restaurant, a little Indian/Nepalese joint called Surya. This is the first restaurant offering 100% authentic cuisine of the Asian Subcontinent that we've found in Kyushu so far and hands down the best curry in the prefecture. Apologies to Pushkar in Nakatsu, hope your feelings aren't hurt over being displaced as the top shooter here, however the Saffron Rice Incident still burns in our minds to this day.

The show was held in a quaint little live house on the second floor of a dilapidated building and was a bittersweet experience from the get go. After having the chance to meet Rie's friends and acquaintances it became excruciatingly obvious (yet again) that life would have been incalculably more interesting had I been placed in this city rather than Kusu. Despite being just a minuscule (in comparison to other Japanese cities) dot on the map, a secondary industrial tributary to the Fukuoka/Kitakyushu production powerhouse, this city is still the home to some of the relentlessly unique free-thinkers I enjoy and are so damn rare in this country. Still, with this ringing in the back of my head the show was freewheeling and fun as hell. The theme tonight was Shibuya-kei, a J-pop sub-genre straight out of Tokyo's ever-so-fashionable neighborhood of the same name that I'd love to describe to you if a concise way existed to do so. All I can say is to check out Pizzicato Five, Cornelius, Supercar and their contemporaries for the answer. Back in the mid-90s these were the first Japanese sounds I heard and loved, and damn if they're not still the most fantastic things out there.

The show started a tad late and went for a couple hours meaning we didn't get home until around 3AM, so you can see our need to chill out. My body though...it just can't sleep like it used to be able—I couldn't sleep past 10AM if my life depended on it. But that was fine, we got a more normal start on the day and headed out towards Nakatsu for lunch at a newly discovered organic foods buffet. In Japan though, it's not called a buffet, it's called—and you're going to love this—a “viking”, possibly because we're raping and plundering the food table. In longboats.

Every "viking" plundering should be followed by a walk to a bridge this lovely. Then, perhaps Usa is the Great Satan afterall since route 666 snakes insidiously within its borders. Oh, that's Usa, Japan. Right...

After lunch the plan was to get up to the Innai and Ajimu areas in the mountains that separate Kusu and Usa, but we detoured to Nakatsu to feed our addiction to The Game and see Japan's very ordinary looking Route 666 leaving very little time to poke around either town. A feeble attempt was made to go onsen-ing in Innai, but the first establishment we found was closed and we couldn't be bothered to find the other one nearby, plus the sun was starting to sink low. This, it turned out, was a blessing in disguise because had we settled on an Innai joint we would never have bothered to turn off towards Udo No Sô on the route 387 homestretch.

These are the typical kinds of bird enclosures found at any farm, only their contents are anything but.

Here's the kicker for me on this day: I pass by Udo No Sô at least once every two weeks because it lies within the Kusu boundries on the way to one of my schools, Hiju JHS. I had seen the signs and never bothered to turn off because the onsen proper is situated maybe half a kilometer off the main road down an extremely steep incline in a tight little valley. How could I have allowed myself to remain ignorant about this place? Actually, I'm not convinced many people in Kusu know about it either seeing as how nobody every mentioned it when asked what a good onsen in town is. If they knew about this place they'd say Udo No Sô is the best, no contest. For 1,000 yen Maia and I rented a private room and took one of the nicest baths either of us had experienced since Kokonoe's Kyûsuikei a couple months previously. The water was immaculate and the scenery hauntingly beautiful.

Hard to tell if this valley is more stunning in the sun or moonlight.

Even if I won't be around much longer to enjoy it it's nice to know this ol' town still has some tricks up her sleeve.

--Matt