Day Twenty Four: Yawatahama, Usuki and Fukuoka

never thought i'd be on a boat.

it’s a big blue watery road.

Poseidon.

as the story goes, I head out of Matsuyama that morning towards the port of Yawatahama.

this is the day I would take the ferry from Shikoku island to Kyushu.

so i'm on the trains heading there when I finally make it. I run to the port because the man at the train station tells me the next ferry is set to leave at any minute...and when I get there I find out i've already missed it by at least a half an hour and the next one won't be there for another hour.

that liar!

I sit around the ferry station and wait for my boat. eventually the boat shows up and I jump on.

it wasn’t what I was expecting. for a ferry that is used to carry cars and other gigantic goodies across the big blue watery road, it was nice.

the ferry was basically something like a small cruise ship. it had rooms for people to sleep, a room with famous Japanese massage chairs, a pachinko parlor, internet café, a restaurant, shower rooms for the rich folks, and plenty of other assorted goodies.

I had a reservation made to be a part of this big room where you all crowd in with other people and possibly try to find somewhere to take a nap. it was like being in a big playpen or something, so I hoofed it outta there and went for one of the suites.

I found a room that wasn’t being used and ended up actually becoming a stowaway in the rich area of the boat. I felt so naughty.

so I slept on the bed for a while, got up and took a shower, even though I ended up putting on dirty clothes after. but hey, gimme a break, I cant find anywhere to wash them right now.

then I went and explored more of the boat before I took another nap.

I woke up to the sound of this loud music telling people the boat was about to reach the port of Usuki. I got up and tried to cover my tracks. it worked out okay.

it was weird though, it seemed like all of the people on the boat had disappeared before the boat even docked. there was only me and about four other men that got off the boat when they issued the call that it was safe to disembark.

there must have been at least a hundred people on that boat, I honestly don’t know where they all went.

maybe they got stuck in naptime and just couldn’t leave? maybe they were enchanted by a wizard because they weren’t clever enough to sneak into one of the suites? maybe they were just enchanted by the magical properties of the boat itself.

nobody knows.


I waited at the station in Usuki and eventually was on a train headed for Hakata, part of Fukuoka. I talked to a man on the train for about three hours on the way there and tried to convince him to let me stay at his place for the night, 'cause I had talked to the guy earlier that I had originally planned to stay with--- and he ended up backing out. the man on the train just wouldn’t have it, but I found out later he was going to a city called Okayama anyway, and why the heck would I wanna follow some guy there that I had just met?

I wouldn’t want to, so I didn’t.

but anyway, my man that I had set up to stay with in Kumamoto backed out on me.

how lame is that huh?

but I make it to Hakata and eat some rice, I call my kid again that I might stay with and he says for sure I cant sleep at his place. I tell him it is kind of a bummer, but a have an insatiable appetite for things that go wrong, because for the most part, it ends up turning into something incredibly worthwhile.

and here I am. I caught the last train of the day for Nagasaki. I didn’t realize I would end up coming here, but for some reason, when I was at the station and I didn’t know where to go or what to do, something told me to get on the train headed for Nagasaki, even with no plan, nowhere to stay, and nothing but dirty, sweaty clothes.

when I was with Noelle in Kyoto, we were using a sink together at our hostel and she wanted to make sure there was a hair dryer there. It was obvious to me that she just wanted to use it to dry her hair.

and then she said something I will never forget...

"I need to make sure there is a hair dryer here so I can have something to dry my socks with after I wash them in the sink."