We hired a car for the second half of the holiday. We really enjoyed driving around - just stop by anywhere anytime. Just make sure you have enough cash!! We ran out of cash on the last day since we had to pay for almost everything in cash - petrol, onsen hotel, restaurants, shopping etc and not all atm machines work with foreign cards. I've been told normally the ones at the post office would work though.
We got our car from Budget - booked via TooCoo!, which is a price comparison website.
You enter the pick up and drop off date/location, it returns a list of available companies and their price
http://www2.tocoo.jp/en/index?
We picked up our car at Kumamoto (by the train station) and dropped off at Fukuoka.
For info about renting a car and driving around Japan:
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2024.html
The weather was brilliant!!! we are super lucky. It was pouring while we were at Hiroshima (which doesn't matter too much as we spent quite a lot of our time inside the museum anyway)
Lunch - いまきん食堂
I have found this from tabelog website again. It's in a village north of Aso - on the way to Daikanbo.
熊本県阿蘇市内牧366-2 Tel: 0967-32-0031
http://tabelog.com/kumamoto/A4302/A430201/43004788/They don't have a very long menu but most people go for their signature dish - wagyu beef don with hot spring egg. It tasted divine!!!
It has a very long queue! Thankfully we arrived not long it opened so it was just a 15min wait. You can just drop down your name with the waitress when you arrive and you can walk around the little village in the
mean time. There are a few nice little shops nearby.
It was soooooo goooood.
Around the neighbourhood - not much going on really :p
We then drove up to Daikanbo 大観峰
There is food WHEREVER you go.
There's a canteen and a souvenir/food shop. After some Aso milk icecream, we had these char-grilled horse meat and wagyu beef skewer!
Biker with 4 puppies on the go :p
On the way back to Aso
菓心 なかむら - This patisserie has been highly recommended by the owner of the guest house we stayed while we were at Aso.
http://www.aso.ne.jp/~nakamura/
http://tabelog.com/kumamoto/A4302/A430201/43006015/dtlmap/
We drove back 3 times just to maximize the amount of cream puff we could have during our stay!!!!
Their cream puff is soooo gooooooood.
Also, I'm a big fan of mochi and they have mochi in various form there!!!
- Mochi inside a puff
- Mochi sandwich between 2 madeleines
- Mochi chocolate fondant
There might be more but that's all we have tried
(Yes, we have tried lots of their products lol)
Their creme caramel and sugar cake donut is very nice toooooo
The cream puff on the rig
That's the mochi sandwich
No picture of the cream puff unfortunately... we normally eat it straight away :p
Wish I could bring them all home but they can't be kept for long :(
You can see a small one here
Mt. Aso is one of the most famous active volcanoes in Japan. You can either take the ropeway or drive up.
I think it costed us around 600 yen per car to drive up while it costs 1200 yen return for the ropeway.
Being an active volcano, the crater area is often partially and sometimes completely closed off to visitors due to poisonous volcanic gases or the risk of volcanic activity.
You can check if it's opened here:
http://www.kyusanko.co.jp/aso/lang_en/
We were extremely lucky!!! It has been closed for several months but it has been been reopened 2 weeks before our trip and when we got up there - it was closed temporarily due to the huge gas cloud coming out.
As we drove off, we heard some Japanese announcement and we saw the car in front of us u-turned.
So we thought we would go back to check and it's OPEN!!!! - not the ropeway, but you can drive up if you want - and we did!
It was magnificent!
It's not as pretty as the picture in the guidebook lol where it looks like a turquoise lake :p
(see the wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Aso)
Dinner timeeeeee - いちの川
http://aso-ichinokawa.com
It's a family run kaiseiki restaurant - very hidden. We had such difficulty looking for it.
It was one of the best meal we had during our trip.
You can reserve a table online (I didn't get any confirmation email from them so I was a bit worried if the reservation really has gone through)
You can choose between 2,100 yen/ 3,675yen/ 4,725 yen/5,250yen per person.
You have to prebook if you want to go for menu >3675 yen so we went for 3675.
It's a surprise menu - chef decides according to what's available/fresh - and his mood probably :p
Frankly :p I didn't really know what I was eating most of the time.. haha..
Everything is so delicate and beautifully presented.
so much foooooooooooooddddd
We've been told the Aso shrine is very nice when it's lit up. so we dropped by on the way back
We stayed at a guesthouse called - Asora.
The owner was extremely nice and helpful. As soon as we arrived, she took out a map and recommended us where we should go - for food/sightseeing/public bath etc.
The room was spacious and clean - the wall is paper thin though ( like all Japanese style house).
http://www.aso.ne.jp/asora/english.html
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