Written by Dave

Rest day – Local tourist day

There were heaps of big-time tourist things we could have done today, the fast train to Fukuoka, climb Mt. Kazashi just behind Mojiko, visit the train or music box museums, etc, etc. Instead, we decided to be more local and check out Mojiko at the local level – no rushing about, no pressure.

Our first stop of the day was the coin laundry – ok, not the Louvre, or even the music box museum for that matter but we needed to get out laundry done so that’s what we did. It should be noted that in Japan, in almost every place we’ve stayed, there has been a coin laundry. A few years ago riding in Thailand, we came across a coin laundry for the first time in months and were so excited. Here, almost every day we wash our bike clothes in a machine in our room/guesthouse/hotel. I doubt Thailand is the same as it was before but it is so nice to have ready access to washing machines on this trip – well done Japan.

There’s highly touted tourist area here called the Mojiko Retro – a group of new and old buildings around the Mojiko train station. We decided to make it our next stop but we went without a plan or target (other than finding the Starbucks coffee shop). It was nice not to be zooming from photo spot to photo spot. In fact, while we were standing on the street looking at an interesting building a local asked us if we needed help. She didn’t know much about the building (it wasn’t a destination spot for locals) and for sure it was not on the tourist list.

The local noted above ended up being Yuki. We accidently bumped into her a little while later in another part of the Metro area. It turns out that she lived in Australia (Canberra) with her family for a number of years. We had an interesting chat with her about opportunities for women working in Japan, all while standing on a random street corner. It was a quirky kind of day – on purpose.

Our next stop was an early lunch (oh no, more food photos coming). The famous dish of Mojiko is baked curry. Every restaurant in the Metro serves it. It’s basically rice, with a raw egg, some onions, a whole lot of Japanese curry and a bunch of cheese – all baked in an oven until it becomes a steaming delicious gooey mess. Being that it’s simple to make we didn’t feel the need to Google the “best” place for a curry but instead picked the place with the best window front views of the harbor promenade. We made a good choice and really enjoyed the curry, plus the people watching.

Next stop was Starbucks to get an espresso – but it didn’t work out. Their espresso machine was not working. I really wanted a cortado so we moved on. Eventually after finding no other espresso machines in the metro area, we gave up and went to Costa coffee. They were 100% self-serve, it was all machine made coffee and phew, it wasn’t too bad. Nancy did the order on the Japanese iPad – well done mate!

Our last set of stops was for food for tomorrow and the next day. We have some camping coming up. The first stop was for dinner supplies at a local fish and chips recommended by Yuki. We would not even gone in the shop had she not told us about it. It’s kind of a hole in the wall run by two keen Japanese chaps. We’ll eat later, if it’s as much fun eating as was ordering, then we’re in for a treat. The second food stop was at the Hallo Super Market. We are provisioned for the next few days. I’m also happy to report that they had chamomile tea, but sadly no peanut butter. Hallo is a very modern and well equipped store. Hope for peanut butter is fading…

The last stop of the day was a stroll up to the shrine behind our hotel. It’s a shrine on Google maps that is not mentioned in anything else. We headed there in hopes of getting a view out across the straits to Honshu. As sort of expected, the shrine was not much, but the views, they were passable. Finally tomorrow we’ll cross over to Honshu and I can stop taking photos of the bridge that we are not riding across.

Overall we enjoyed the day of not racing about. We made a new friend in Yuki and are ready now to head to our last (big) island. Bring on the east coast of Honshu.