Roving Japan

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.