August 25-27, 2008: Fukuoka, Beppu and Kyoto

We had originally planned to spend August 25-27^th exploring parts of Northern Japan. On the evening of the 24^th, as we were doing some research, we realized it would take about 13 hours by train to reach Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. Also, severe thunderstorms and rain were forecasted all week for almost the entire country.

We looked at some weather maps online and the only place not forecasting rain was the southern island of Kyushu. So we decided to make another trip to Fukuoka, and to Beppu (which we hadn’t seen yet), which are both on the island of Kyushu.

We woke up early on August 25^th and took the train to Fukuoka. We took the shinkansen, and it was amazing! After taking local trains for 3 weeks we were in train heaven with our 300km/h train!!

We arrived and checked into our hostel: The International Hostel Khaosan Fukuoka, and then went out for a walk. We visited the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. It was an interesting art gallery filled with artwork from China, Philippines, Malaysia, India and other Asian countries. Even though the artwork was great, I had hoped there would have been more Japanese artwork. Actually the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum is the only Asian art museum in the world. It had an interesting section on Chinese propaganda art, lots of images of Mao.

By the time we finished visiting the museum it was already dark outside, so we took a stroll along the water and went back to the hostel. We made friends with 5 guys from Vancouver who were also staying at our hostel, and we hung out with them on the roof top terrace of the hostel for the rest of the night.

The following day (August 26^th) we took the train to the city of Beppu. Beppu has the 2^nd highest volume of hot spring water in the world, and Kannawa is an area in Beppu with a large number of hot springs. The hot springs are used in two ways: as Jigoku (hot spring displays), also called hells, and they are also used in onsens (thermal baths).

There are 8 hells in the area: 6 Blue Hells and 2 Red Hells. We visited one of the blue hells: the Umi-Jigoku. The Umi-Jugoku was formed by an eruption of Tsurumi-Dake 1200 years ago. The jigoku enclosure contains beautiful botanical gardens as well as exotic and tropical plants.

There are two hot springs in the Umi-Jugoku. One that is red, and another that is blue. Here is a photo of the red one:

The main hot spring of the Umi-Jigoku is beautifully blue.

The water in the main hot spring is hot enough to boil eggs. It is said that if you eat the eggs boiled in these waters you will live an extra 7 years. So we bought 5 eggs. This is a photo of a stick where they attach eggs to boil:

After exploring the jigoku, we headed over to Hyotan Hot Springs Onsen. The onsen was incredible. The woman and men are in separate areas (because you are required to bathe in the nude), and there are indoor and outdoor baths, each with different properties and features. Indoors there was a waterfall where you stand under and let the water massage your shoulders and back.

There was also another indoor bath with pebbles on the bottom to massage your feet. Outdoors there was a waterfall bath, but the slope was more gradual, so if you sit at the bottom of the waterfall the water would massage your bum!! This is the photo from the onsen brochure, and the photo in on the brochure is of the waterfall that massages your bum:

In addition to all the baths there was a steam room, which used natural steam from the hot springs.

After spending a few hours relaxing in the onsen, we got back on the train back to Fukuoka. Once back in the hostel we enjoyed the hot springs boiled eggs with the hope of adding a few more precious years to our lives!!

The following morning (August 27^th) we left our hostel in Fukuoka and took the train to Kyoto. We really enjoyed Kyoto the 1^st time we were there, and felt we didn’t spend enough time in the city. Kyoto is en route from Fukuoka to Shizuoka (close to Ken’s house), so we stopped there for a few hours. I had a chance to do some shopping during that time, but it wasn’t long enough to see anything major. We then got back on the train to Ken’s house.

While walking from the train station to Ken’s house we were stopped by the police!! We were questioned what we were doing in Japan, for how long were we visiting, who we were staying with etc, and were asked to see our passports! After inspecting each one of us we were allowed to continue our walk to Ken’s house. We spent the rest of the night relaxing from our 3 day small journey and preparing for our trips back home. Steph, Fieke and I were all leaving Japan, and we were very sad to be saying goodbye to each other, to Ken, and to the wonderful country of Japan.