Ohara Bento (おはら弁当), Kagoshima Chuo Station

One of my favourite food finds in Kagoshima is Ohara Bento (おはら弁当). It is a tiny takeaway store selling bentos and sushi, located outside Kagoshima Chuo Station (walk towards the direction of the tram stop Kagoshimaekimae)

Prices are very affordable. One day for breakfast, we bought a kani temaki handroll, inari and kani sushi to share for a grand total of 484yen. As marvellous as convenient store onigiri can be, the sushi from Ohara tastes sooooo much better! 

Ohara Bento has been in the food manufacturing and catering business for 40 years. Besides running several takeaway outlets around Kagoshima, it also supplies bentos to schools, delis and departmental stores. You can also order online. 

We gobbled down our sushi so fast that we totally forgot to take pictures. But here's the menu from their website to salivate over instead.

How to travel from Fukuoka Airport to Kagoshima by Shinkansen (Day 1)

We left Singapore in the wee hours of Monday morning (16 Nov). Six hours and two in-flight movies later, our SQ flight landed at 8.20am at Fukuoka International Airport.

First impressions? Wah seh the cool autumn wind is soooooooo nice!!! J

Fukuoka Airport Departure Hall - I don't have any pics of the Arrival Hall coz we were in a rush!

This is a rather tiny airport and no other planes arrived the same time we landed. We managed to clear immigration and collect our luggage in under 30 minutes. A  hallmark of Japanese efficiency I suppose!

After entering the arrival hall, we looked around for the signage for the free shuttle bus that would take us to the Domestic Terminal. We found it pretty easily. Just turn right at the arrival hall, take the escalator down and follow the signage.

The shuttle bus was already waiting at the bus stop when we came down the escalator and we quickly boarded. The bus was filled with people already and we had to stand for the entire journey. However, it was fine as the trip was pretty short – about 20 minutes only.

Konnichiwa Kyushu (16 to 28 November 2015)

We are back in the land of the rising sun again after our honeymoon in Hokkaido in 2014! Over 13 days in November 2015, we travelled the length and breadth of this beautiful yet underrated part of Japan, traversing five out of the seven prefectures on the island (Fukuoka, Kagoshima, Miyazaki, Kumamoto and Oita)! Despite spending close to two weeks here, there are still a lot of places left unexplored! 

(The stars shows the various places of attractions that we were looking to visit – we did not make it to all of them, especially those on the west coast. Reason to go back again next time!)

As with our previous holiday, we rented a car on this trip which allowed us to journey to the more remote parts of Kyushu. I loved the freedom and flexibility of having our own ride. We went where we wanted to and we could stop anywhere we liked (as long as traffic rules permit). We explored places well beyond the usual tourist traps and into ulu mountain villages and small towns not found in the typical guidebooks.

This really paid off because we were rewarded with a rich cultural experience of living like locals. What left the deepest impression for me was how warm and friendly the people are. Throughout this entire trip, we had a lot of chance encounters and interactions with the locals due to the places we stayed at and it is these human connections that made this a very special trip for us.

Kyushu! We’ll be back!