Fukuoka Cat Cafe

Sorry, I totally forgot to put this in before I moved on to my February vacation. Going to the cat cafe was easily the best thing Ed and I did in Fukuoka. We found a few websites for cat cafes, and two of the places were in the same neighborhood, so we headed over there one day. One of the places was evidently pretty obscure, and we couldn't find it, but we did find the other one, called Neko Cafe Keurig. It was pretty cool. There were something like thirty cats in there, too, which is crazy.

After going in and putting on slippers, spraying our feet with disinfectant, and putting our stuff in lockers, we could choose our "menu" and pay. I think at most cat cafes, you can pay per hour or half hour to just play with the cats, but you can also get a "set." At this place,  you could get a drink set, where you get a drink and an hour of play for I think it was ¥980 per person, or for a few hundred yen more, you could get a lunch set and have a meal. We chose the drink set.

Thankfully, water was free, because this was happening when we first sat down. When we got some new waters, it happened again later. My cats used to do that to my bedside water glass.

Here's a cat who looks like my cat Barrel, and who was pushy and bossy like Barrel, too.

Here's a nice looking cat.

This cat looks like a big ol' fatass, but actually was a very small cat. I don't know if it was just a naturally small one like my mom's cat Bob, or if it was a kitten. Maybe a kitten.

The cats have ridiculous amounts of things to climb and sit on.

And lots of toys.

Ol' Blackie.

There were even shelves running all along the ceiling.

And lots of beds that had from one to many cats in them.

Ol' Fuzzy Face.

There were a few piles of cats that didn't move the whole time we were there.

Barrel Lookalike was also a seat thief.

Well, they all were. I guess they're their seats, anyway.

This was funny. This cat was standing there, guarding the sink for so long. Then he left and another huge cat sat in that spot, guarding. It reminded me of Sam and George, the sheepdogs from the Warner Bros. cartoons.

I like the sneaky one.

Here is a series of focus-defying cats at play.

This cat looks kind of lonely, despite having a friend.

Ol' Cyclops. A lot of these cats are rescued.

Here you can see the cover they give you to put on your coffee cup. Water is expendable to thirsty cats, but when you pay ten bucks for a cup of coffee, you want to it to be free of cat tongues.

 Blogger got kind of dumb in that it won't let me watch videos in editing mode anymore, and I don't want to go through and find all the files in my computer, so hopefully these are all amazing and totally worth watching.

After this experience, Ed got kind of obsessed with the idea of cat cafes, like how they get started, where all the cats come from, what happens if they escape, if they ever give any away, what the cat politics are with all those territorial cats living in one small place, how they handle discipline, etc. Then he wanted to make a documentary about it. Which is a good idea. I think he had even more fun than I did.

Kurokawa Onsen

As I mentioned previously, I had booked a night in a traditional Japanese inn in a little hot spring village up in the northern part of the island. Because I had been too sick to travel on the day Ed and I were supposed to go, and because they were fully booked the rest of the time he was in Japan, I had to reschedule the reservation for a later date. It was too late to get a refund. Luckily, one of my Japanese friends at school likes hot springs (onsens) a lot and said she could go with me instead.

The name of the village is Kurokawa Onsen, which means Black River Hot Spring. Although there are other resort towns in Japan and specifically Kyushu, this is one of the better ones, because there is an understanding (or maybe legislation) there that prevents things like giant concrete hotels, billboards and neon signs, and even convenience stores. Everything in the area is in the same quaint style, made of stone or wood. The purpose of the village is to enjoy the natural hot springs that the inns are built around. This area is especially good because most of them also have rotenburo, outdoor hot spring baths. The best time to enjoy rotenburo is during the winter, because you can enjoy being outside and seeing a nice view, but not be too hot, as you would be in summer. The hot springs are really, really hot, hotter than a hot tub, so it works well with freezing temperatures.

Here are some photos I took of the village.



 



This is a little public foot spa, where you can just take a break and stick your feet in a little hot spring river for free, but it was closed, with no water running through.
















Here's the little Black River that runs through the village. Most of the inns are situated along it or near it.










The village is so small they don't get a full police station.



There are more than 20 inns in Kurokawa Onsen, maybe about 30, all of which have a few onsens, and most of which have at least one rotenburo. You get free access to any baths that your own inn has, but the big draw here is that you can get a special pass called a tegata, made out of a tree cookie, that allows you access to three different baths for 1200 yen. Alternatively, each bath costs 500 yen. The tegata is popular because people like to see a few different baths to really get the most out of staying in this area. It's really expensive. Also, the baths are so hot that you shouldn't and can't really stay in most of them for more than 10-20 minutes, and walking to the next one gives you a chance to cool off so you can go again. Even in the depth of winter, people walk outside from hotel to hotel in just their yukata (a thin kimono) and sandals, because the onsen heats you right to the core and gets you sweating.

Here is my tegata. The white strip is where three stickers used to be. With each place I went to, they removed one sticker and put their hotel stamp on the cookie.

Misaki and I arrived at our inn around 2:00, an hour before check in. However, they let us check in early because it was the slow season, and they weren't full enough to warrant making us wait. I took some photos of our room.

This table is called a kotatsu, which I learned about from my students. It's a special two-layer table with an electric blanket set between the layers. It's pretty much the only way some Japanese people keep warm. Apparently the tradition is to sit at this thing with family or friends and eat oranges. I don't know why. Underneath this particular kotatsu is a hole in the floor where you can put your legs, like sitting at a regular table. I don't imagine it's set up that way in the home, though.

Wall scroll--much more expensive in Japan than in Korea, unfortunately.

Even though it's supposed to be traditional, we still had TV. I can't imagine anyone turning on a TV when you have all this other stuff to do, not to mention the views out the window.

Here are the famous rice-paper sliding doors that Homer Simpson crashes through in that one episode.

Our armoire was filled with little goodies like towels, socks you can wear with sandals, and maybe some toiletries.

As in every Japanese housing establishment, there is an electric kettle and a box of tea and tea accessories.

Our entrance had a little kitty on the wall and maybe a little shrine??

Here's the main room as a whole. If you notice there are no beds, it's because there are no beds. In this type of place, while you are away eating dinner, gnomes move the table off to the side and put out futons on the floor.

Sink area with lots of free toiletries.

Japanese style washlet, as it's called here, with three types of bidet functions.

Possibly humorous wall hanging for toilet.

There's no shower or bath in any of the rooms, of course, because the whole purpose of the place is to use the onsens. They have shower facilities by all the indoor and most of the outdoor baths, so that's where you would go to wash.

Here's the front of our room. The rooms aren't numbered, apparently, but named. Ours was called rindou (pronounced sort of like "leendoe"), which is a type of flower--gentian in English. I never heard of that flower.





Here are some views from our window.







Here are some shots of the hotel interior. It was pretty big, multi-building.

These are all little gods, I think.

This is a little study where you can read a book or something and get some free coffee. I got us some coffee at one point, but it was terrible. I was extremely pissed off about that, since the room cost almost $200 per person per night. Surely they could afford better quality coffee.

The main building and the branch buildings were separated by the river, so we had to go across this little bridge.

 This is a bit of decor by one of the reception areas. From afar it just looks like a big turd, but up close you can see it's a bunch of horses.

I imagine they do something pretty fun at this table.

Here's the lobby in the building we stayed in.

With some views.

All around the grounds, along the river precipice, were little touches of quaint stuff, like this little spring. Sometimes these kinds of springs are meant to drink from, but I think this particular one was hot. I think I saw some eggs cooking in it the morning we left. That's common.

Here was our inn's own little foot spa, but we didn't bother to use it, since we had full body baths everywhere.

The ubiquitous Japanese koi pond.

This is the reception area for the main building. It seemed like a nice little place to hang out. If I were rich I would have stayed at this place a few days and chilled out on the grounds more.

There was a little model of like a traditional kitchen in there, too.

Later, the fire was going.

 I've been working my way out backwards from my room to the main entrance, so we're back outside again.

This inn was special, too, because they welcomed pets. This little building near the entrance is a special dog onsen. No joke. You can see on the sign a dog bathing in the water.

Here's the inside. It was empty, so I guess they don't fill it up unless they have guests with dogs.

Here's the main gate, Yamabiko Ryokan on the sign.

Anyway, we had the whole afternoon to enjoy the hot springs at the other ryokan, so we bought a tegata from our place, chose three places we wanted to go from the brochure, and set off.

The first place we went to was at Ryokan Yumotosou, which had a rotenburo surrounded by a bamboo grove. It was very peaceful. This is a picture from the internets. Because it was the off-season, we didn't have to share with many people. All the baths we went to, by the way, were gender segregated, so there would always be at least one bath for men and one for women. However, gender segregation while bathing was something those dirty Christians (literally, as they thought bathing too much was unhealthy) introduced into Japan a few hundred years ago. Traditionally, men and women bathed together, as it's a natural, nonsexual thing to do, and there are still some mixed gender places you can go to--such as at several inns in Kurokawa.






The second place we went to was a bath that was voted in the top 100 onsens in Japan (Japan has thousands, so it's a big deal). It was a rotenburo at Ikoi Ryokan, which is unusual because the back part of the bath is deep enough that you have to stand--it was about shoulder height on me. There are two large bamboo trunks hung parallel across the top of the water by ropes, and you can hang on to them and do like water acrobatics if you want. Or you can just throw your arms over one, rest your head on it, and relax. Here's another internetto picture.



After this one, I was pretty hungry, so we took advantage of some of the ¥50 hot spring eggs outside the ryokan.



Right in the entrance area was this little building where you can sit down for a while.

On the left side was a foot spa with a table.

We sat on the right side, where there was a little room just like that model in the picture above. A dude came and started a fire in the center for us, and there was a big iron teapot hanging above it, which they still use to make tea. It was pretty cool, although I hate tea.

 Then I had a nice cold drink from the spring. At these springs, there is always a little copper? cup on a stick, which everyone uses. It's pretty unsanitary, but they seem less concerned about sharing with strangers than we do. Since it's Japan, that cup probably does get washed at least once daily, too. They clean everything.

The third ryokan we went to was called Kiyashiki. This one was a bit out of the way, and we had to walk about twenty minutes or so, and up some big hills to get there. I liked this place the best, though. It had some streams of water coming down, so I was able to use them to massage my neck and back.



So after we finished using our tegatas, it was almost time for supper. Japanese traditional hotels like minshuku and ryokan often either include no meals or two meals--since the food at places like this is supposed to be really good, I went with the two meal option, which I think actually ends up being almost half the cost of the total bill. By the time it was time to eat, I was starving, so the food ended up being even better than it normally would have.

In a lot of ryokan, you get served your meals in your room. I would have really liked that, but I think maybe part of the reason this hotel was slightly cheaper than the other ones (as if) was that you don't get that benefit. We had to go to the main building to an area off the lobby to eat. However, each room does get its own private dining room, which is nice. Here's our rindou dining room.



Our meal consisted of several courses, laid out here on my own special menu. Unfortunately, I can't read it yet.



This was the first course. It's a big soup in the middle, and the black thing is a little barbecue to cook the little slices of beef and veggies on.

This is a specialty of the area--horse sashimi, raw horse meat. I really liked it, despite that I don't really like fish sashimi. But again, I was starving, so who knows how I'd feel about it now.

Pretty much everything in a meal like this can be eaten in one or two bites, which is good for picky eaters, since you don't have to deal with it for long.

The thing in the bowl is one of the few Japanese food I really like, which is some kind of egg pudding. That's also some more soup, and the requisite whole fish, all of which made another of the courses, or maybe it was two more courses...

More courses included a little plate of pickled items--the brainy thing was a plum, I think. Normally pickled plum is called umeboshi and it's freaking terrible, but this particular one was sweeter, so it wasn't bad. The other pickles I think I left, though.

Fruit and wagashi, Japanese traditional sweets, were the final course--I forgot to take the picture before I started eating it. I left the wagashi, the thing in the middle. Squishy "sweets" made of rice and/or bean paste are not dessert. They are fucking WORTHLESS.

When we got back to our room, the futon gnomes had already been there and put origami cranes by our pillows.

After resting a bit, we went to finally use our own ryokan's rotenburo, which ended up being full of torture. The other baths we'd been to all had changing rooms and lockers inside, where it was warm. But this one just had an open-air building to change in, with no heat, so now that we had cooled down from our earlier baths, and it was now dark, it was a very, very cold few minutes of getting undressed, walking up some cold stone stairs, and getting into the tub. Then the water ended up being even too hot for Misaki to tolerate easily, so we had to keep dumping buckets of the water on ourselves to try and get used to it before getting in, then slowly, slowly putting our bodies in. We were pretty pissed. But it was nice once we got used to it, and we were pretty warm for the next couple hours, especially since we got to use the kotatsu back in the room.

 

The next morning we got up early to shower properly and use one of the indoor baths before breakfast. Then we went back to our dining room for a traditional Japanese breakfast, which I was significantly less pleased with than the dinner, because I was less hungry. Still, there were some good things like poached egg, soup, salmon, and some vegetables. The problem with Asian breakfast is that it's not much different from Asian lunch or dinner. I've had this problem in Korea and other Asian countries, too. I think the staff were maybe surprised at the difference in the tiny amount that was leftover during supper and the large amount I didn't eat at breakfast, if they were paying attention.

So then after breakfast, we got our stuff together and checked out so I could catch a bus on to Fukuoka and fly to England to spend a couple weeks. I'll be blogging about that on Pughnited Kingdom, so czech that out next week.

Despite a couple minor annoyances on this trip, it was overall really excellent, and probably going to be the most memorable place I'll have been in Japan.