A Stroll Through the Stroll Garden: Suizenji-koen is a stroll garden1, that is one which you can walk around and take in the many views rather than one that you just sit down and look at from a seat on a porch. You might have noticed from the photo that in the top left there is a mound resembling Mt Fuji, this garden actually made to resemble a miniature Japan.
After strolling through the garden we caught another tram, but we got on the wrong one and it didn't take us to the train station. We had to catch a taxi to make it back to the train station on time. The taxi driver told us with a laugh that even locals often catch the wrong tram.
We caught the train to Kobayashi, but I didn't take any photos on that leg of the journey because the light was fading fast. You will see later (the return trip) that there is fantastic scenery along the line from Kumamoto to Kobayashi. It takes a long time to get to Kobayashi because it is an old diesel-electric train which slowly goes up one way and then the driver changes ends and it comes back the other way to get up and down the steep mountains.
When we arrived in Kobayashi, I met Ritsuko's brother and sister-in-law at the train station. They asked me "do you want coffee?", and thinking they meant a cup of coffee I said "Yes", but instead they brought me to the supermarket and bought me a jar of Maxwell House! Then I met Ritsuko's parents and also her niece and nephew. Everybody was so nice to me, but the best memory was from her nephew who seeing that I was the only person who was sleeping alone in a room loaned me his Mickey Mouse soft toy to sleep with.
Click here to view the Japan rail map if you go to Kyushu Island (you might need to zoom in) you should be able to find Hakata and Kumamoto, Kobayashi is not on the map. To find it go to the south of Kyushu and find a town called Miyakonojo, Kobayashi is about half way up the line that branches from Miyakonojo to the North West.
Note: You might see a Shinkansen on the map called the "Tsubame" this train only began in 2004, in 1997 the "Tsubame" was not a Shinkansen.
