Author: rodney

Went to Sakurajima today. There�s a smoking volcano there!
See? It�s smoking!
Took a ferry over to the island. It was a 15 minute ride that costs Y150. That�s Y10/minute. What a deal.
We hiked around a bit taking in nature and all that stuff.
Sakurajima is an active volcano, last erupting full scale in 1995. Full scale meaning fire, brimstone, lava and smoke. Basically the worst disaster film you�ve ever seen.
Back in the early 1900s, Sakurajima erupted and lava flow wound up in the ocean, connecting a small island. Fierce!
The best part was being able to relax in the nearby onsen. One of the pools has minerals taken from the lava rocks. It was pretty relaxing.
Note: If you�re visiting an new (to you) onsen, ask about towels BEFORE you go change and wash up. Fortunately, I dry quickly and T-shirts are absorbent.
Now we are on the Tsubame Sooper Express, bound back to Hakata. Ramen Yatai tonight! It�s basically a big area near the river full of ramen stalls. Hakata is (in)famous for eating throughout Japan.
All I had to do is mutter the words �ramen yatai� when we were at the JR ticket office and the guy at the counter let loose a silly grin.

It’s always a late start to the day when there�s high-speed internet in the room.
Also when you ask the hotel concerige to help with arranging lodging in the next town. Or actually the town after the next.
I left two days open (without destination or hotel reservations) in the trip so that if we wanted to be flexible in where we went, we could do so. We decided to head to Nagoya on the way back to Tokyo and I asked the hotel concierge to make some calls to find lodging.
Sold out. Sold out. Soooooold out!
He then brought us some suggestions which were out of our price range. I asked for an internet terminal so I could do a search. No dice. And no business center.
I wound up going to an internet cafe to try to locate a hotel in Nagoya.
Internet cafes here are different. Besides the fat pipe and lots of Pee Cees, there�s a fully stocked library of manga and magazines, free beverages, junk food (cup noodles and chips of all sorts), massage chairs, VIP rooms and they�re open 24/7 pretty much. People who stay out too late at the bars have been known to stay the remainder of the evening at these cafes which is why they have a more expensive rate from 0000 to 0800 on the weekends.
In either case, I had to take about an hour to locate a place to stay. Between that and our helpful concierge who tried to find us a place to stay, we lost two hours. So I call that a late start.

I like this. It’s a guy who is selling sake at JR Hakata Station.

The best part is that he’s giving out samples!!!
Yum!
And unlike the US, where he would either be mobbed by freeloaders or arrested for violating some archane local law, Schu and I were the only ones partaking of free sake while we were there.
And if we didn’t have to lug it around, I would have bought a bottle of “fire sake”.

Beppu is known for a few things. For example:
The undue enthusiasm of the JR lady who announces the destinations of trains.
“Beppuuuuuuuuuuu! Beppuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!”
Actually, I thought it was cute, but that’s just me.
Being the onsen capital of Japan, there’s a LOT of onsen here, along with the smell of sulphur all over. The sulphur comes through along with the mineral hot spring water.
And the “Jigoku Meguri” or the “9 Hells”. It a group of hot springs for looking at because they’re so hot. Since it would be boring to cough up yen to see bubbling mud and steam at each one, each of these places have an added attraction to spice things up.
One had a sad looking zoo, another had an aquarium and another had a lot of crocodiles.
Yup, crocodiles.
Still another had a greenhouse, one had an aquarium, and one had nothing at all but a geyser.
Some had some nice gardens and waterfalls with the whole “nature” theme. And then there were some demons and dragons around too. Some of the hells were beautiful too. This is red. Nice shade of blue here. And they all had a place to soak your feet (except the geyser place) and useful advice.
Shockingly, I don’t have a whole lot to say about it all, except it took 6 hours to tour it all. It’s neat to see, but you only have to do it once.
If your friends want to check this out and you’ve already experienced hell, send them along on the tour while you chill at the onsen.

Beppu is, according to Lonely Planet, a (hot spring) tourist mecca that rivals Las Vegas in tackiness. The secret, according to them, is to enjoy and appreciate the tackiness.
Okay…
Arrived at JR Beppu Station around 1900 this evening. After searching for about 15 minutes with a woefully inadequate map, we located the Minshuku Kokage just off the main drag that leads to the station. Here’s the sign that shows you where it is.
It�s a small family run place that has curfew (00:00) and has a hot spring in the back (well, it�s actually more of a warm spring, but more on that later).
The room is big and I have a bathroom with a very cramped western style toilet that looks like it was grafted onto a Japanese squat toilet. Verrry cramped!
And now, enough potty talk! Heh heh.
Dinner time drew near which means that it�s time to stroll around looking around for food. After browsing through several used CD/DVD shops (not my idea), we went to the end of the street where you can see the Beppu Tower.
I read somewhere that each major city has an observation tower of some sort. Maybe it�s a law…
Anyhoo, it was my idea to walk back via a parallel street. And boy, was that some street! Strip clubs! Hostess clubs! Bars! Ramen shops. And a really neat restaurant that made various forms of donburi. And apparently old too.
Here�s the menu. And a very happy customer!
Good stuff, that katsu don.
Afterwards, we went back to JR Beppu Station to shop at the Daiei (owned by Wal-Mart, I think) for tomorrow�s snacks. I got yoghurt and coffee for tomorrow AM and pudding and drinks for this evening.
Then I tried out the hot spring in the Minshuku. It was relaxing and all, but more of a warm spring. Not hot enough! The hot onsens are for tomorrow.

Rode the Sanyo Shinkansen past Shin-Kobe this afternoon to Kokura and transferred to the Limited Express “Sonic” for the 65 minute ride to Beppu.
Passing Shin-Kobe marked the furthest south I’d ever been in Japan. Wah.
The Shinkansen was marvelously fast, at one point the announcement sign blinked to notify the passengers that we were traveling at 285 KM/hour. That’s hella fast, even if you translate that into MPH.
Transferring to the Sonic was an example of how they do things differently in Kyushu, compared to the rest of Japan.
For one, the floor of the train was wood. The seats were leather. The train had a hood ornament (!) And we were stuck in the back of the smoking car…!
Koff koff.
To JR Kyushu�s credit, the ventilation system was very efficient. I lit up a small cigar, blew some smoke rings and voila! Smoke be gone.
Despite that, Schu and I wound up sneaking up to the non-smoking non-reserved seat car. We explained to the Conductor via stilted Japanese and pantomime why we were up there instead of our assigned seats in the back of the smoking car.
He nodded and stamped our tickets again.
Inbetween each car is a small area where people can stand around and socialize or in the case of car #3, watch sattelite TV while socializing and waiting for the bathroom.
For a limited express, it went pretty quick. So quick, the train rocked back and forth like a boat that’s anchored out on the ocean. I was feeling a bit seasick for a while.
It was nice to stand on the platform for a minute after we had arrived at Beppu to take in the fresh, rotten-egg (cuz of the sulfur that’s part of the hot springs) smelling air.

Long Entry Ahead!
I’ve been to Kyoto a couple of times before. This will have been my fourth visit. And there’s so much around here and in the City that I haven’t seen yet (like Nara) that I’ll probably have to come back here yet again.
My first visit, I stayed in Osaka with Schu and one of his “friends”. The person in the quotation marks requires a separate entry to explain. I’m pretty sure that if you poke around in the archives, you�ll find an entry or two that tells the story. My second visit, I stayed in the Ponto-Cho district near Gion. That was pretty fun. My third visit, I stayed at J-Hoppers, which is now the preferred lodging of me and the Walking Ixus.
On this visit, I was actually able to reserve a room at Tour Club. On my previous three trips, Tour Club was sold out. It’s easy to see why. Tour Club also serves as a gaijin central, with plenty of other tourists to meet. Staying at a place that has been written up as much as Tour Club pretty much guarantees that you, english speaking traveler, will meet many of your own kind if you stay there.
Which we did and we did.
Once we got settled in and grabbed some dinner, waffles for dessert and a wet night tour of Gion, we came back and hung out in the common room. We met a lot of people including Gen (an Ozzie girl teaching english in the ROK with a soldier boyfriend), Kyle (a Houston native who teaches in Sendai, in southern Kyushu) and people from the UK, Ukraine, Slovakia, France, Japan and Singapore.
The default lingua franca was English, much to the chagrin of the french speaking duo staying there.
Kyle was arranging a early morning trip to the Golden Temple. It requires a walk to Kyoto Station and a bus ride. We left the Tour Club before the owner was up and stashed baggage in the lockers at the station.
They still have lockers here. How civilized.
The bus ride was boring until about 40 high school students on a field trip to the shrine boarded the bus. Then the bus became a lot more lively, loud and navy blue.
Besides the attraction of the Golden Temple, the grounds are gardened to within an inch of its life. Which means that it was absoultely beautiful.
I wish my backyard could look like this. =p
Then we went to the temple with the famous zen rock garden that is supposed to be the world in metaphor. Much of these grounds are devoted to the concept of zen as you can see with the clensing sink, lake and lots of souvenir shops.
Or omiage (oh-me-yah-gay) as they call it over here. Remember, you�re not buying for yourself, you�re buying for peoplel you know that couldn�t make the trip.
Kyle continued on his temple trek, while Gen, me and Schu headed back to downtown for lunch at the Misoka-an Kawamichi-ya. It�s been around since the 1700s and for me, this is a return engagement. I thought it would be a neat place to bring Gen and Schu to. And I was right. It was good food and fun. We even chatted up the woman at the next table, winding up taking a lot of snaps.
After lunch, Gen went on to the Imperial Palace and Schu and I left for Beppu. Two changes of train (Shin-Osaka and ) and 4.5 hours.
I call this “nap-time”.