Paul and I arrived in Ibusuki mid-afternoon. Our ryokan, Shusuien, was a lovely traditional ryokan located five minutes from the beach. We walked through the traditional, beautifully decorated entrance and were greeted by staff before being led to the lobby which opened onto an immaculate Japanese garden. There was even a little ochashiki in the corner – a traditional Japanese tea ceremony room – next to this, an open door to a decking area in the corner of the garden where guests could plonk themselves on cushions to dip their feet into a hot spring bubbling up into an ashi-buro – foot bath – or, if preferred, a pit filled with the hot volcanic sand Ibusuki is famous for.

Ibusuki is a little seaside village about an hour eastwards along the coast from Kagoshima, famous for a stretch of beach where hot springs well up through the sand, creating a sunamushiburo – a steam sand bath. It has been visited by many for its health benefits for centuries, and it is good for rheumatism, arthritis, and all kinds of aches and pains.

Okuda san of JNTO in London had been a wonderful help to Paul and I when we were in the thick of packing up to leave London. I had managed to book our first twelve days of accommodation, but had struggled to find more after that with lots of places fully booked – much of Japan would be getting busier as it approached Golden Week, a long stretch of national holiday. When our lovey friend Michiko rang up to ask how things were going, I was in a bit of a whirl with so much to do – “I don’t know how I’ll manage to organise the rest of our trip, there’s so much to do before we leave!!!”. She stepped into action and called Okuda san, who in turn called his contacts and in less than 24 hours, accommodation for five different locations had all been booked for us. Thank you everyone!

The Shiroyama Kanko hotel in Kagoshima had been the first of these places booked for us, a lovely hotel with incredible views, and now this, the little ryokan in Ibusuki, where the staff were charming, incredibly friendly and at ease in English – something of a relief for Paul, who had had nothing but Japanese spoken around him for nearly two weeks.

They gave us instructions for our first sunamushi bath. It was drizzling, so after we’d got ourselves into our yukata and packed our towels and washing things into the little baskets they gave us, we were driven down to the public sunamushi bath centre.

In our respective male and female areas we changed into yukata supplied by the centre and packed our things in lockers. Wearing the flip flops provided, we wandered out and along the sea front taking in the salty sea air, and down some stairs to the sand bathing area along the shoreline. There, people with shovels neatly and expertly packed yukata-clad customers into neat rows in squares of steaming black sand, leaving just towel-wrapped heads exposed.

Soon it was our turn. Little hollows had been made for us in the sand, with gentle mounds for our heads. We lay down next to each other and some little obachan (“aunties”) got busy with their shovels. You could tell they’d been doing this a long time. They spilled not a grain of sand anywhere and they packed us expertly under the hot sand. I asked one if she ever got a sore back. “Definitely. It does in my koshi (lower back)”. Poor thing – I guess the simple solution was to have a go under the sand herself. It can’t be an easy job, doing this day after day, however fit it must keep you.

The black sand was pleasantly weighty and although initially the hot sand under my backside burned a little (Higashiseto san in Kagoshima had warned us not to stay in the sand for too long – otherwise we’d end up with a bright red “monkey’s bottom”), I soon felt drowsy and relaxed under the heat and weight. We were told not to stay in for longer than fifteen minutes, and clocks were dotted all around so the buried didn’t lose track of time. The only bit of me exposed – my head – was sweating profusely and my whole body was pulsing gently with the heat.

For obvious reasons we couldn’t take any photos of ourselves undergoing this rather unusual process, so we called over the sunamushi photographer who snapped us as we lay there buried. Here’s a photograph of the photograph.

When we felt we’d baked for long enough – the full fifteen minutes – we unearthed ourselves from the sand. We felt fantastically refreshed, rested and light. Paul heard the phrase “Kimochi ga yokatta!” everywhere so I taught him this useful expression, often uttered after a good bath – “that felt great!”. He created a subtle and interesting variation on this phrase, coming up with “Kimchi yukata!” – “yukata robe made of garlicky and spicy Korean pickled cabbage!” which caused some merriment but he got the hang of it in the end.

After our sand-baking, we each went into our respective public baths attached to the sunamushi centre. Showering off the excess sand and taking off our yukata, we washed ourselves sitting on stools by the taps, then having rinsed off, went to soak in the hot spring waters. As the waters come up through the sea, they tasted salty. Our ryokan hostess told us that because of the salts in the water, the body stayed warmer for longer than a normal bath and were exceptionally good for the skin. Mine felt soft and smooth for days afterwards.

Once washed and dried and wrapped in clean yukata, we went outside where we were met by the ryokan driver again, who took us back in time for dinner, and once again, what a dinner it was.

Packed with local specialties, we had everything from sweet black pork gently stewed with miso and soya beans, to lobster caught just near Ibusuki beach, to fresh sashimi, again, locally caught, served in its own little miniature kamakura – a little ice house.

There was a lot of food. Paul and I were going to have to do lots more exercise – we were going to need to do more than cart heavy rucksacks around. But for now, we trotted down to the ryokan’s public baths, had a soak, then came back and fell asleep straight away in the fluffy futon they’d laid out for us in our room.

The next morning we were presented with an absolutely enormous breakfast. All healthy, low fat options, but the quantity was vast! It was delicious, but this was the first day on our two week journey where we felt that perhaps half a grapefruit each would have been best.

We’d enjoyed the sand steam bath the day before so much we decided to go for one last burial. Outside, the rain had long stopped and the sun was blazing golden, the temperature just perfect with a soft spring breeze keeping things cool. It looked like summer out there, the sea sparkling and twinkling at us. For the first time this year we were in short sleeves. Back at the sunamushi centre we went through the ritual again, standing the weight of the hot sand for as long as we could before rising out reborn and refreshed.

We still felt floppy and relaxed as we checked out and headed for the station.  From Ibusuki back to Kagoshima, we boarded the Tsubame shinkansen train again, heading straight north up to Hakata in Northern Kyushu, heading away from quiet, rural Japan and gradually back towards urban areas in preparation for our return leg back towards Tokyo.  As I watched the sparkling sea slide past the train window, I felt a little twinge of regret, then remembered that two months from now we would be living somewhere not too dissimilar from this ourselves – albeit without the hot volcanic sand – in chilled- out, peaceful and sunny Adelaide.