I’ve been to Japan before, to Honshu, but have not explored the southern parts, so this trip was designed at seeing Kyushu. I flew into Fukuoka as an entry point via Seoul that is a lot cheaper than going to Nagasaki. My trip had three bases: I used Beppu as a base to see the Hells, and Usuki, Kagoshima to see Sakaragima (a volcano), Ibosuki (sand baths), Shiran (the kamikaze museum) and finally Kamomoto for the city itself and Mt Aso.

Kyushu is nothing like as busy as Honshu and doesn’t seem quite as affluent. The trains and buses all ran on time. Kyushu is probably cheaper than Honshu for accommodation – I spent on average £23 a night in mostly Ryokans – good value – and can all be booked through the Japanese Inn group. There are also far fewer foreigners and tourists in Kyushu than Honshu.

It's less than a year since I last came through Seoul airport. A year ago it was a busy, heaving place with all the restaurants and shops packed out. Today you can go in anywhere and do anything without waiting. I think SARS is having a big effect. There are lots of people walking around with masks on, should I have got one I ask myself? There’s not even much in the shops. I just cannot believe how quiet this airport is, there's nobody rushing, no announcements, there's only about 10 flights on the departures board.

Arrived in the city with the best 3-letter airport code I know Fukuoka (FUK)!!! Got the shuttle bus then the ultra efficient metro in to the city. I was glad that I had my compass to come out of right exit. Then a 10 min walk to my hotel: very nice, tiny room, probably big for Japan, but it has a bed, shower, TV and its own ultra efficient kettle, very handy! Apparently a rice breakfast is included but as I didn’t wake up till 9am, I missed it! Fukuoka is a big modern city, nobody here has a mask on there is not much for a tourist to see, it is more of an entry port.

I took a side trip from Fukuoka to Dazaifu to see a shrine and a couple of Zen gardens. They are great with all their symbolism. Loads of parties of school kids going “Herro” i.e. “hello” and “England number 1”. All of it is good natured, and people have been so helpful: I had 3 old dears put me on the right train this morning!

Took ages to cash travellers cheques, because they are issued by Barclays via Sumitomo Bank. This meant that I had to find a Sumitomo Bank to cash them. It rained yesterday afternoon, so I went to a baseball match in the Fukuoka Dome, which was fun. I like baseball, and went to lots of games when I visited the USA. The Japanese cheerleaders are nuts, they keep up this constant barrage of noise and at 7th inning stretch they all let off balloons with whistles in – you should hear it! Also visited the museum of contemporary Asian art, some nice things and some so decidedly strange that they would not look amiss in the Tate Modern in London!

I’m surviving with the food ok, (Padmassana has been known to be a bit of a picky eater – the Beetle!) bought some hot tofu on sticks and stuck them in some bread rolls with my pea crisps for a picnic today, they even have little pods! KFC etc for major meals. Body clock not happy, keep waking between 2am-4am, then can’t get back to sleep till 6am.

Up early today, getting the train to Beppu. Took about 4 hours to get from Fukuoka to Beppu. Beppu is famous for the Hells. If anyone tells you Beppu is a “Hell” of a place it’s true! I checked in at Beppu Hotel and went to the tourist office to ask for directions. The man at the tourist office took me right to the door. I don’t think that would happen in London!

The Hells, as I have already said are Beppu’s claim to fame: a series of hot springs that are different colours due to the underlying rocks and minerals etc, one is bright red. A 2,000 yen ticket allows you visit all seven. Some are boiling mud pots, but most are steam. The last one is a sort of geyser that explodes every 20 minutes. It took me 4 hours to go round them including a bus ride between two sets.

Did a day trip from Beppu, about an hour and a half by train to visit some stone Buddhas, dating from the 10th century. You walk up a short hill and then see lines of Buddhas carved into the hill. These are reputed to be the best and oldest examples of stone Buddhas in Japan. Also visited Usuki from Beppu. The town itself is quite nice, has an old street of houses that are interesting. There was torrential rain, so the rent a brolly lady was doing a good trade! I am staying in a business type hotel that has free tea on every floor. I managed to sleep through the night for the first time since arriving. Despite the weather, another nice day, a country where you feel safe and the people are fantastic.

In Part 2, Padmassana tells us about Miyazaki and the clay statues and the journey to Kagoshima. If you would like to contact Padmassana to ask him about his time in Japan, he can be e-mailed on: Padmassana

You may have received an e-mail saying that British Airways is giving away free plane tickets to anywhere in the world to anyone who forwards the e-mail to 10 or more people – it is sadly a hoax.

The e-mail claims that it is encouraging more people to fly, following a downturn in the airlines industry because of concerns about the SARS virus and the war in Iraq. It also says that British Airways is working with Microsoft who is allegedly monitoring the distribution of the message. It’s just not true, I’m afraid, so delete them.

Budget airline EasyJet has been told by a UK advertising watchdog to make the true cost of its flights clearer in its adverts. The carrier must include potential taxes and other costs alongside the price of the flight. This response came about as a result of complaints about three adverts promoting flights “from just £1”.

U. S. Soldiers Home, Mac: I am a compulsive reader and pick up any newspaper, any printed matter I see laying around and start reading.

This is from January 14, 2003 issue of Examiner newsmagazine. Nick Jeffreys write about a guy walking around the world. The walker is Karl Bushby from Hull, England. He is a 33 years old ex-paratrooper. He began the walk Nov l, l998 at the tip of Chile. Has walked 12,00 miles so far going through Peru, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico. He goes 20 miles a day every day and has nine years to go.

He started out with $500 sewn into his jacket (I would probably absent mindedly lay the jacket down some place.) His mom and dad send money and replace his boots every 1,178 miles. His website is www.earthtrekuk.net and there is a lot of info on it, about Karl, why he is doing it, his Colombian girlfriend and more.

He pulls a small aluminium cart with his gear tent, sleeping bag, food, and water behind him When his provisions run out, he lives off the land. A picture of the cart shows that it has large wheels. I always like large wheels on carts as they pull easier and easier to pull up and down stairs. He was in a Panamanian jail for l8 days “in a stinking cell with crooks of all varieties,” for not having the correct visa.

When his journey is over in 2010 he is not sure what he will do next. “But he has a lot of time to think about it. “ Maybe I will just throw myself in front of the TV and never move again.” If I am ever thrown out of the soldier’s home I live in, I hope he will loan me his cart and I will try to follow in his footsteps, although, at 79 I may just be dreaming!

Matt is a volunteer at the Old Boma, Mikindani, Southern Tanzania.

During a visit last year to Mikindani, I was informed of a physiotherapist working in Nyanguo mission hospital and having now started my degree in this subject I decided to try and gain some experience. Arriving I was happy to find the hospital staff willing to have me for the day.

Physiotherapy is a treatment supplementary to medicine and aims to bring people back to as high a possible level of recovery. In its simplest form it is finding out what a patient wishes to achieve and working towards that by doing things differently or using treatments. I had the opportunity to go on the ward rounds at the hospital and saw many patients and got to see the differences of practices here in Tanzania compared to the UK.

The cause of hospitalisation can be more bizarre here: one patient had been washing his hands in a river when a crocodile bit his arm. Although he was severely wounded there was no loss of nervous tissue, so exercises could be done to help him regain hand movements. Another patient had fallen from a coconut tree and broke his back so was regaining strength in his upper body after prolonged traction.

Physiotherapists can have time to sit and talk to patients, which allows you to find out a lot more about them, their problems, and local life. A female road worker suffering from ‘good old lower back pain’ revealed that she had visited a witch doctor, which had resulted in infection and incidentally, increased pain.

The most rewarding part of the day was spending time with one small girl who had fractured her femur, trying to get her to use small crutches. She was very active and enthusiastic, and after some effort she could manage alone. We also visited the paediatric ward to play ball games with the kids to keep them active. Here the physiotherapist had done a great job building relationships with the children, which made it easy to fit in and create conversation with them.

The sight of a child overwhelmed by cancerous growths or a victim of major burn injuries was not pleasant but obviously these sorts of things are expected in hospitals. However, unfortunately all of the cases were affected by the patients' financial situation and therefore ability to pay fro treatment. Without payment, treatments are not given and, this being true of government hospitals also, many people are left to suffer. I could only be left thinking how much luckier we are to have the British National Health Service to fall back on.

However having read several articles about hinting that only the ‘dark’ side of Africa it told, I always try to pick out the magical things here of which there are many. A wedding is such a colourful and happy event, and the end of Ramadan is always an event to remember with the children dressed in new clothing and adults enjoying the night. Everything I have experienced here thus far seems to be more enhanced than at home and I encourage anyone to come and see things for themselves.

For more information about Trade Aid, volunteers and their work, please visit their website www.mikindani.com

Same names: how many place names have you come across that are the same, but different countries? There’s Paris Texas and Paris France. Other place names include Versailles in Kentucky and Versailles in France; Naples and Venice in Florida and Naples and Venice in Italy. Do you have any favourites? Write in and tell the Beetle!

Recently, the Beetle was asked about Guidebooks – what is out there and can she make any recommendations? Below is a commentary on a selection of some of the guidebooks available:

Eyewitness guides, published by Dorling Kindersley produce glossy guidebooks with lots of pictures on cities and also countries. The city guides are especially good although a little heavy and longer than most of the others. The Beetle particularly recommends these for short city breaks as they provide lots of background detail about certain sites or attractions and exploded diagrams of the insides of churches or palaces etc. They are not so great about telling you how to get to and from some of the attractions, although the Istanbul guide was excellent and rated better in a recent trip there than the corresponding LP on Istanbul. See www.dk.com

Fodor’s used more by the North American market and for slightly more wealthy travellers than backpackers, although they do have shoestring guides too. They tend to be fairly slim volumes and are particularly strong on North America, Mexico and the Caribbean. Take a look at www.fodors.com/

Footprint guides have very good guides on South American countries. They also do Canada, (not the US), selected European and African countries, Middle East and a good range of SE Asia. At the time the Beetle was backpacking around South America, the Footprint individual country guides were a lot better than the LP guides, in particular that awful huge tome LP produces on all S American countries! For more info, see footprinttravelguides.com

Frommer’s – used more by the North American travel market and appear to be aimed at a slightly more affluent market than backpackers – unless anyone would like to write in and disagree! The maps are generally good, and a lot of emphasis is placed on reviewing pubs, restaurants, hotels, bed and breakfasts etc. A quick look at a guide on Ireland, Jury’s Court Inn in Cork is described as inexpensive at $61 and up for a room. Otherwise they offer slightly pared down info on LP and RG. Frommer’s also do portable guides that you can download onto your palm pilot or similar not to mention a magazine and an e-newsletter. They are strong on the number of Caribbean titles. For more info on Frommer’s guides, see www.frommers.com

Insight Guides publish over 200 titles, again quite glossy, good photos – more of a coffee table book than a guidebook to take with you on a trip. This kind of book may be useful for planning a trip as it has the glossy pictures, but I would not take it on a trip to use as a guidebook. For more info, see http://www.insightguides.com

Lonely Planet – see also the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree website for sources of travel information. Lonely Planet, or LP is the granddaddy of modern guidebooks. People tend to either love LP or they hate it, and if the latter, their usual choice is Rough Guide (RG). The Beetle prefers the LP because it usually has good maps, (some colour pictures!) and she likes to know about every single restaurant and hostel available at the time of writing and feels quite aggrieved when only a selection are given (as in the RG)! Whilst prices change, you can always work out the ratio of increase so that you still have a rough idea of potential prices. See www.lonelyplanet.com

Moon has been going 25 years and produce guides covering Americas, Asia, and the Pacific. They are slightly biased to the US market but do nevertheless produce good guidebooks with good maps and lots of detailed information. The Beetle finds that Moon Guide distinguish themselves on regions, particularly US states rather than entire countries, for example excellent guides on New Mexico, Kauai, Mexico City etc. If I were to visit a US state, then this is the book I would take with me – lots of good maps, and local info. They also have city guides called Moon Metro and include San Francisco, New York, Paris. For more info, see www.moon.com

Rother guidebooks are about walking. They are a very handy size, good for slipping into a pocket, they usually have around 50 walking routes per guidebook, with fabulously detailed maps, giving you all the info you need such as grade of walk, approximate time to take, refreshments available en route, how to get there and return. The Beetle likes these books very much – if you are a walker, then these are for you! Destinations covered include many different parts of the Mediterranean, and Norway and Iceland. For more info, see www.cordee.co.uk

Rough Guides – as discussed above, we tend to find that people either love these or hate them. They have just as good a range in titles as LP, and they are very popular. They are just as comprehensive in terms of information as the LP, but in a very different format. Both LP and RG publish language guidebooks and a newsletter. Rough Guide tends to place hotels, hostels, restaurants etc in price brackets, but nonetheless give you enough info to make a decision re restaurant or hotel. For more info, see www.roughguides.com/

Trailblazers a small UK based company that do excellent guides particularly on walking and trekking, so if this is your thing, then these books will give you very details routes with distance, estimated times, danger points, and a whole load of walking or hiking – even climbing activities. For more info, see: www.trailblazerbooks.co.uk

Ulysses publish two series of travel guides and are strong on Canada, the US and Central America. The Beetle bought Ulysses guides on Panama, Honduras and El Salvador when there was nothing else available, and they were really very good. They also do language guides. For more info, see www.ulyssesguides.com

Do you have a favourite guidebook, or one that was just terrible? E-mail the Beetle and let us know about it!