Hey everyone! I have loads of news to share with you! I graduated from Infini on Sunday, and before that, I took a trip to Kagoshima with my mom and bro. And since we were making our way down south of Kyushu, I decided that we should stop by Minamata on the way there. Partly because it’s good idea for the bro to learn more about the Minamata disease, and because I wanted to go back to Minamata after seven years (we went there for ROCs).

Our first stop was the Minamata Disease Municipal Museum. Getting there was a bit tough though – we stopped at the Shin-Minamata station, and ended up having to wait about an hour for the bus. But at least the bus stopped just outside the Museum, which was nice.

When we went in, we saw a traditional fishing boat made by the president of the Minamata Disease Victim’s Association.

They’re actually closing this exhibition down at the end of the year, so that they can renovate it and present the new version next April. So it was a good thing that we managed to come now, or I’d have absolutely no recollection of the place.

By the way, there was a lot more English materials here than I expected. Not only were there well-written pamphlets, the lady played an English video specially for us, and most exhibits have English translations, and videos have English versions. So there’s absolutely no need to worry about not understanding what the disease was about.

After we finished touring the museum, we decided to take a taxi to Fukuda Farm/Spanish Village. I don’t think there’s a bus (and if there’s a bus, it stops 15-20 minutes away from the farm), so the nice lady at the reception desk got us a cab.

Isn’t it pretty??

The farm is situated on top of a hill, and has a lot of pretty buildings! There’s a bakery, a few restaurants, a jam shop, and this is the mikan picking season (but it wasn’t open that day, because it was drizzling).

The view though. Seriously.

We opted to have lunch here, since it was pretty troublesome to get here. My bro got the bacon steak, and for the first time ever, he couldn’t finish the bacon. So my mom and I polished the remaining pieces off.

The two of us got their paella set, which apparently requires a minimum order for two people. It was in several courses though, first there was the soup course, which was carrot soup:

And then we got some delicious bread:

And then the main dish – a seafood paella in a large, large pan (tasted so good!!)

Before we finally got dessert – fruit jelly with fruits!! By the way, the bread was also baked in house, and I think some of the fruits were grown in the farm too.

All the while, we were sitting in this lovely room, with these cute flowers all around:

After lunch, we went to the jam shop, where I’ve been waiting for the past seven years to get my hands on their honey butter. The honey butter is seriously the bomb, even my friends still think about it. Sadly, I don’t have a happy ending to tell – they discontinued production (why didn’t someone tell me, I’d have gone down and bought everything)

The people were really nice though. Since I didn’t have that honey butter, we just bought some sweet potato jam and a sweet potato jelly thing for my granddad. While we were paying, I asked the lady to help us call a cab, because I have no idea what the local taxi numbers are.

But to our surprise, the lady didn’t call a cab. She got a colleague of hers to send us to the station for free!!! I honestly thought we had to pay a fee, since we didn’t buy that much, so when they told us it was free, I was like O.O

We felt like we should have bought more.

After this, we headed to Kagoshima, but that is a post for another day(: