Ok, so I’m the biggest idiot – I forgot to charge my phone the night before going to Kumamoto to meet Kumamon, so I have no photos on my phone. Luckily, Joel took some but I have to wait till we get home to upload them.
Anyway, Kumamoto is about 2 hours away from Hiroshima by shinkansen. Our main reason was to visit Kumamon! He is a mascot for the Kumamoto Prefecture and he is awesome! You can visit his “office” which has photos of him with other mascots and all sorts of other bits and pieces. At 3pm out came Kumamon to plenty of cheers. The place was full – lots of kids but was actually mostly adults, some weirdly obsessed with him (more than me, lol). He danced and clowned around on stage for 30 minutes – it was pretty funny even though we didn’t understand much. I even got a hug and photo with him as he left. Love him!!
Later we went to Kumamoto Castle. Unfortunately we got there late and couldn’t go into the main castle tower, but did get to go through the main hall and through the grounds. It was very impressive! Kumamoto seemed to be a really lovely little city, we wished we had planned to stay a night there. Next time!