Amami Superman Photography

The past 3 weeks have been pretty tough on me. I caught a cold that was very mild but I got ear infections in both ears from it. I used to get ear infection when I was a kid pretty regularly, but I don't remember them being this bad. It felt like someone was stabbing me in both my ears with screwdrivers. The pain was almost too much to handle even with the pain killers the doctor prescribed. I ended up having to go to the doctors again and they gave me some different medication to take. The pain killers seemed to work better but I'm still not over the infections completely even after taking all the medication they gave me over the last week.

My wife and I had been planning a trip to the mainland of Kyushu for a few months. I knew I would have a terrible time if I couldn't get over the ear infections so I did everything I could to get better as quickly as possible, but to no prevail. So the past few weeks I've been taking it easy and I haven't taken very many photos.

Last Friday we departed by boat for our trip but even though I was still under the weather, I tried to make the best of it photography wise. I was packing all the luggage so I didn't get a chance while boarding to take any photos but I got a few before and after.

The boat we rode was regular size compared to some of the other ferries I have ridden in the past. Some of them have been bigger than this, some have been smaller. It was kind of weird because they had a boat similar to this from the same company capsize about a week before we left. You can find an article about it here. Only 28 people were on board that particular ferry, but there were way more people on our ferry that night.






They try to get the most money for their space on these ferries. It's almost unreasonable they way they have the rooms set up. If the boat is crowded, you pretty much have to sleep shoulder to shoulder with the people around you. Your experience riding the ferry all depends on when you take it. If you take the ferry on a holiday weekend, you are almost guaranteed to be sleeping next to a strange old man who has had too much to drink and tries to fondle you in his sleep, or next to a restless child who spills his soda on your blanket and then continually kicks you in his sleep during the night. OR, you can catch the ferry on a day during the week and have loads of room around you, plenty enough to sprawl your luggage out and enough space to take up two sleeping areas without causing a fuss to anyone.

We were riding the ferry up on a Friday of a three day weekend. We had everything from high school volleyball teams to junior high baseball teams to the Japanese Defense Force riding the boat. It was pretty packed. But I have to say that the ride up was better than the ride down by far. After getting on board and getting our luggage situated, I went out on the upper deck to take some photos after we left port at around 9:20pm. It had started to rain so I didn't take too many.


As I said, it was jam packed and I decided to just put my camera away and try to find a spot somewhere to read a book.

We arrived the next day around 8:30am in Kagoshima. After getting off the boat we caught a taxi to the Mazda rent-a-car where we rented a car for our travels. This day alone was the main reason for our trip and we were pushed for time. I didn't take any photos along the way or even that night after we got to the hotel in Fukuoka. I was pretty beat and went to sleep right away.

Even now after we've returned from our trip, I find I'm still under the weather. We've been busy with work and it actually took two days to finish this post. I still haven't gone through all the photos I took for this trip but I should be able to this weekend.