Roving Japan

Day 16 Photoset

Imagine what it would be like if someone built a city on top of Yellowstone National Park. That’s Beppu. Now, imagine all the cool little hot spring pools at Yellowstone being integrated into a city by turning them into tightly controlled little parks. Those are the ‘Hells’.

Each ‘Hell’ is a little park with a specific type of hot spring. The hot spring is moulded into a specific form, has side walks, and sometimes has Japanese gardens all around it. At the same time it’s both interesting and kind of sad that there is little to no natural feeling left to any of the springs. Its like a Disneyland version of Yellowstone. The finale of the Hells is a geyser that has been contained on 3 sides, and even has a roof! I guess it makes the photo better if the geyser can’t do anything unpredictable?

In addition to the natural sights, each Hell has some other attraction. One has a mini-zoo with an elephant, some monkeys, and a hippo. Another has fish from the Amazon. There is even a Hell that has about 50 alligators. In one of the Hells, they boil eggs and then sell them in the gift shop. We ate some and they were pretty good. They are really working hard to make you feel like you aren’t wasting the $20 you have to spend on the all-hell pass. I think I would have enjoyed it more if the springs were left in a more natural state. Oh well.

We are going to Yufuin tomorrow. It’s a small resort town about 1hr by train inland. Then on Tuesday we are going to rent a car and day-trip to Aso-san.

Day 15 Photoset

There is an art festival happing in Beppu right now. Risa’s brother had mentioned something about it, so today we wanted to go check it out. There was an information booth at the train station, so we went back there to pick up a map and brochure.

The maps we have been getting in Beppu are all pretty bad. They all suffer from the “tourist map syndrom” which usually means they omit 75% of the roads and condense 5km stretches of highway. Basically, from a navigation standpoint, all our maps were worthless. This included the map to the different art exhibits. We found ourselves quickly ignoring the maps, and just walking around until we found something, then checking on the map to see where we were.

The art we saw was very… stundent-y? It was very “modern” and “experimental”… which generally means “makes no sense”. Like the dirty, yellow ramen bowls set up in a shrine. I guess we just didn’t get it? It was also clear that the navigation signs that were put up around the city were not designed by designers, because these signs made no sense. One sign at and intersection had arrows pointing down every street and had no labels. Basically, “you’re here, and you can go anywhere”. Thanks. That helps a lot.

At this point, we had pretty much given up on the art stuff. Not very interesting, and impossible to find, so we just walked. It was good that we did, because things finally got interesting!

We stumbled upon a little bakery that has been in Beppu since 1917. The place was small, but jammed packed with people. Since it was so popular we had to stop in, and we bought ourselves a couple fresh An-pans. I have to say, it was really good.

After the bakery, we rounded the corner and started heading back to the hotel. I saw a little old lady sitting near her window sill staring down at the road. As usual when I see someone looking at us, I said, “Konnichiwa!” and we continued on our way… for a few steps at least. The little lady yelled back. “Do you want to come up for a drink?” Not knowing if it was tea or sake, we took her up on her offer. Turns out, “drink” meant 7% alc. beer. Sweet!

She was super nice, although a bit strange. She lives alone but has 6 cats. By the time we arrived, she was on her third beer! She cooked us up a bit of food, gave us some beer, and we just chatted for about an hour. Back in the day, she was a dancer and a singer for something like 50 years. She even sang a bit for us. She also offered us the chance to stay with her… but we decided against it. Her house smelled a bit too much like cats and she might have been a little drunk. Either way, we had a fun time drinking and talking with her. We wanted to take a picture, but she said she wasn’t dressed for a photograph.

Our last stop of the day was at a Meiji era onsen. Just $1!

Tomorrow we are going to check out the Beppu “hells”.

Day 14 Photoset

We survived the night! No bugs attacked us in the shed, and we weren’t hit by lightning!

The plan for the day was to walk about 20km into Oita, then find a shrine to camp in. The walk wasn’t too exciting, although there were a TON of huge black nightcrawlers on the sidewalk. I’ve never seen worms this big before. One was still very much alive, so I decided to use a stick and throw it back into the woods where it could live… and the darn thing JUMPED! I’ve never seen a worm jump before. It was kind of like a fish out of water. I thought it was interesting, Risa… not so much.

For lunch, we made it a point to find a Ringer Hut. These little restaurants are all over Kyushu, and although their name is strange (I think they are going for “Bell Tower” and they came up with Ringer Hut) the food was actually pretty good! We figured they were going to be a western style restaurant, but it turns out that Ringer Hut is a Kyushu fast food chain that specializes in Nagazaki Champon Ramen. They do a good job too! There is a Ringer Hut in San Jose if you’re interested. After lunch we kept our heads down and just powered into Oita.

We past our 20km goal, and realized we still had a ton of time, so we picked a couple of shrines further down the road, and walked to check them out for camping possibilities. The first shrine was super tiny, lots of mosquitoes, no water, and no toilets. It was still a possibility, but we wanted to check out the other shrine before we settled on a spot. At this point, my stomach was beginning to act up, and all I really wanted was for the shrine to have a pit toilet at least. So far on the trip, that wasn’t hard to find.

The second shrine was really nice, but no water or toilet again. The closest toilet and running water was going to be a convenience store about 15minutes walk away… Normally this would be fine, but I just wasn’t feeling 100%. So I tossed out the idea that we jump on a train for the last 20km to Beppu. Risa, who was in camping mode, instantly shifted into, “I can sleep in a bed” mode. This usually means she walks about 2x faster and she has no urge to use a bathroom until we arrive at the destination.

At this point, we had already walked about 25km, and it was about 5km to the closest station. But with Beppu as the goal, we managed to walk the last 5km no problems and we hopped on the next train to the onsen capital of Japan.

In the end, we walked about 30km, and took a train for 15km. We are now sleeping in a private room in the Beppu Guest House. Tomorrow we have to move to the dorm, and then after that… we aren’t sure yet. But regardless of where we sleep, we are planning on staying in Beppu for at least 4 days.