Oct 2, 2008

sightseeing with a Singaporean

nukisan,hirao-dai

Last Saturday and Sunday, I spent time with my Singaporean friend who has visited to Japan. I met with him last year's summer and rode bike with him. (Here is his blog about his travel with bike in Japan.)This was the second time of our meeting.

The first day, we had dinner at a Japanese restaurant named "Chi-ka-ei"(稚加栄) in Kokura(小倉), Kitakyushu-city. It served a traditional Japanese dish named "Kaiseki-ryouri"(懐石料理). It is formed of many small dishes. This time, he took his girl friend. She has worked as a cabin attendant at Singapore airline. She is very beautiful and charming. She is just "Asian-beauty", I think.

Next day, her girl friend left Kokura early morning to go to Tokyo by using Shinkansen. And I took him to a mountain area called "Hirao-dai"(平尾台) in the city of Kitakyushu.

It took about an hour to get to the top of "Nuki-san"(貫山) mountain. On the top of the mountain, winds were strong and it was a little bit cold. And it was cloudy, the condition for climbing a mountain was not good.

We had a simple lunch there. I boiled water and we ate cup-noodles.

It tooks about one hour to go back to the place where we parked my car from the top. And we entered into a cave that is the biggest in the area. I had experienced it about 40 years ago, so I did not remember it. Entering into the cave was a kind of exploration, and more interesting than I thought.

After going out of the cave, we had a short stop at a big souvenir shop, but it did not have good post cards that he was looking for.

After that, we returned to Kokura. We had about one hour until his departure time, so we ate "Rah-men"(ラーメン) at "藤王"(fuji-ou). It was "Syouyu-rah-men"(醤油ラーメン), although Kyshu's represetative rah-men is "ton-kotsu"(豚骨).

I saw him entering into the Shinkansen platform and said "Have a nice trip" to him. I hope he is satisfied with sightseeing with me.

P.S. On that day's evening, I ate moon cakes that was his present from Singapore to me. Moon cake is called "Geppei"(月餅) in Japan. I enjoyed it with my family very much.

1 comment:

ジョン said...

Thanks for the photos and the writeup. Sounds like you had fun. It's nice to meet up with old friends sometimes, isn't it?

Also, the term 懐石料理 is very interesting. I'm glad that I was able to learn it.