Beppu: First Road Trip of Japan

I apologize in advance because this is going to be a VERY long post. As I said before, this past weekend was a long weekend and six of us decided to rent a car to drive down to Beppu. We had so many adventures, planned and not. I could not have had a better time!

I woke up at 6:30 on Saturday morning to get ready. I made some tea and Caol came over before heading to the station. We meet Vixay, Juha, and our new rental car Betsy at 8:00 A.M. and were soon joined by Leah and Emily.  Once everyone had made a final run to Family Mart for a last minute breakfast we were on our way!

We made one quick stop along the way to visit Nakatsu castle. We walked around the castle grounds, where there were many shrines and a beautiful pond. We went to the main shrine beside the castle and Caol and Leah got fortunes. The fortunes came out of a machine that had a small doll in a display case. When you put in your money, the doll would walk to the back of the display through a door, then return holding a fortune, which she dropped down a small slide that lead to your hand. No one had bad luck and we continued into the castle. There was a small museum inside where we saw swords and armor from different feudal lords and at the top we could walk around outside on a small observation deck. After walking through the castle and outside we decided to continue on our way to Beppu.

We arrived at our hostel around 1:00 P.M. and were delighted to find that we had one room all to ourselves. We all claimed our beds, then headed out in search of lunch. We walked around for a while trying to find a curry toast place that another JET had recommended to us with no luck. We eventually gave up and found a nice place near Beppu station. We had ice cream afterwards and watched a band that was preforming in the station.

We all piled back in the car and drove straight to Hell, a group of natural hot springs so hot they cannot be touched. The hot springs were many different colors because of the different minerals and clay in the soil around them and it was amazing to see them all. Many also had gardens around them as well as shrines. There were also foot baths that were run offs of these hot springs that you could put your feet into. We all sat around with our feet in the water and by the time we got out our legs had turned red from the heat, but it was incredibly relaxing!

There was a tour guide standing at one and he showed us how blowing ash into some of the hot springs would cause them to smoke, or if they were already steaming it would double or triple the amount of steam. He even went inside the gate almost into the water to show us! Juha even took a turn blowing the ash in to see if he could get the entirety of the hot spring to steam. We ended our day at the Hells with an egg that had been hard boiled in the hot springs.

After going to the Hells we decided it was time to go to a real onsen (hot spring), one we could actually sit in and enjoy (and that didn’t smell like sulfur). After making a quick stop back to the hostel for our towels and soap, we went to Takagawara only a few blocks away. Takegawara is a small onsen and is famous for being the oldest in Beppu. We were hoping to try the sand baths as well, but unfortunately they were already full for the night. We agreed on a meeting time and split up.

It was not too crowded on the women’s side and we had a great time. Before you can even go in the pool, you have to wash off. Some onsen have small shower taps on the sides of the walls, but this one didn’t. So you take a small plastic stool and a bucket and sit near the pool, scooping out water and dumping it over you to rinse off. Once you’re clean you can jump into the onsen. Although I would suggest starting off slowly rather than jumping, Takegawara’s pool was about 90 degrees Fahrenheit! After an hour and a half of relaxation we met back up with the boys and headed out.

We drove up one of the nearby mountains to get a look at the entirety of Beppu. We could even see the city of Oita across the bay! It was beautiful, but we didn’t stay too long because we were eager to get some dinner. We again went in search of curry toast. We found the curry toast restaurant across the street from Takegawara (and where we were parking the car), but unfortunately it was closed. We wondered around a found a great little restaurant. We ordered a bunch of different things from ramen to mayonnaise shrimp and had a beer to celebrate our first successful day of Beppu. We decided to call it a night after dinner since we were all so tired and by now it was well after midnight.

We started the next day by walking to Beppu station to grab some coffee. Emily and I both had ice coffee, but rather than cooling it down with ice they put ice cream in! I was surprised, but it was delicious and a great start to the morning. Vixay met us at the station with the car (he had been at the airport that morning waiting for a friend to join us, but she never showed) and we hoped in and headed to Hita for B1, a Kyushu food festival. It was about an hour away and we had gotten a late start. Vixay’s friend was supposed to arrive by 8:00 A.M., but she didn’t have a cell phone and couldn’t call to tell us she had gotten sick, so we ended up waiting and not leaving until about 10:30. We still made it to B1 in time for some food, although many had been sold out. Despite this setback, we still had a good time walking around the parks and sampling famous food from all around Kyushu.

After heading back to Beppu, we went back to the Hells to see the hot springs we had not seen the day before. On our way back to the hostel we took a wrong turn and ended up at a lookout point. It was a beautiful place to look at the city from! It was really cool to see steam rising out from all over the town from all the hot springs underground.

We tried again to have a much earlier dinner at curry toast, but again it was closed. We ended up walking to a YouMe (a nearby mall) because some of us needed to buy more soap and shampoo and had a really nice dinner there. We walked along the beach to another onsen and headed in. This time we brought bathing suits because there was a mixed outside pool at the onsen. We started by splitting up and spending about an hour in the separate rooms. This onsen was much bigger and had a separate shower area, a few indoor pools, a beautiful outdoor pool, a steam sauna, and a “squall shower.” I’d never heard of a squall shower before, but basically it was a small alcove that when you pulled a string, a bucket of warm water dumped down on you. The girls hung out inside for a bit, then went to the outdoor pool before putting on our bathing suits and meeting the boys outside. The mixed outdoor pool was amazing. It was huge, with a hot tub sectioned off by stones in the middle. The pool was also warm, it was filled by water overflowing from the hot tub. This pool was also able to be open to the city and had an amazing view. Over the edge of the pool we had an incredible view of the city, Beppu tower, and the ocean.

We walked back to the hostel along the beach and decided to stay out a little longer. We found a small bar and had a few drinks. There is a big international school in Beppu and almost everyone in the bar was foreign. Because school is still on holiday, though, it was mostly staff who had come in on their day off to celebrate a birthday. The birthday boy was from Boston originally and it was very funny to have come all the way to Beppu only to have a Sam Adams with another Bostonian. After the bar we went back to our room in the hostel where we played card games and hung out.

Our last day in Beppu was definitely our most adventurous. We woke up early because we wanted to climb a mountain in Yufuin and we needed to bring the car back to Kitakyushu by 8:00 PM. So we woke up and left around 9:00 A.M. We again tried to go to curry toast, but again it was closed. We needed to grab gas before heading to Yufuin, so we stopped at a gas station and Vixay filled up the tank. We left again, but quickly noticed our car was making a weird noise. We pulled over and got out, but couldn’t find anything wrong. The car was still making the noise and was having trouble driving over hills, so we decided to go back to the gas station to see if they knew what was wrong. We went back, but the car died at the intersection before the gas station. Turns out, Vixay filled the car with kerosene. We eventually got everything fixed and we had gotten insurance on the car so we didn’t have to pay for the damage, but we did have to get a new rental car (which the company brought to the gas station we were at very quickly). It took a tow truck about an hour and a half to get to us and we blocked a lane causing traffic for the entire time. Caol and I walked to a grocery store and bought everyone some breakfast while we were waiting. Vixay will never forget the kanji for kerosene again.

After we finally got back on the road we definitely did not have time to climb Yufudake, the mountain we were hoping to get to the top of. We did drive part of the way up and walked around for a while. We stopped at another lookout on the way down the mountain for some ice cream and a great view of Yufuin. We got down to Yufuin around lunch, so we ducked into a ramen shop. After lunch we went shopping for omiyage to bring back for our teachers. While shopping, we ran into another Kitakyushu JET (who I didn’t know, but Caol, Juha, and Vixay did). He was visiting for the long weekend as well with his wife and as it turned out he had been stuck in our traffic jam earlier that day!

He gave us a great suggestion for one last onsen and we headed there to spend our last hour. The onsen was right near a lake at the base of Yufudake Mountain and was by far the most beautiful onsen we visited. It was very small, but the pool was outdoors and the day was gorgeous. The pool was made from a natural inset in some rocks and the boy and girl pools were side by side with just a small wall in between, so we could still talk to the boys. After the onsen we quickly walked around the lake and then headed home. We got back with no problems and turned in the car about 10 minutes before our time was up.

Emily had to go straight home, but the rest of us went to the arcade and played a few rounds of jubeat. Before I got home I went to Patrick’s apartment. Patrick is my neighbor and fellow new JET. He offered to make some dinner since he had been home all day. So I came back to my neighborhood around 9:30 P.M. completely exhausted, but was lucky enough to to have dinner and video games waiting for me.

I gave out my omiyage at school today and the teachers were all so happy! I have Thursday off because I’m going to school all this weekend and Wednesday night we have plans to start figuring out our next trip together! Hopefully Kagoshima in our next long weekend in August!