Day 3 Japan - hot springs!

25 August
Day 3 Japan

Good thing I had only planned 2 nights in Kumamoto!  The day trip to Nagasaki was nice so I don't regret that but Kumamoto itself was a bit of a bust due to my poor planning.  That's fine though ... I wanted to be fluid and flexible on the trip so that's working already.

One of the things on my list for Japan is to go to an onsen ... a hot spring.  There's an onsen town called Yufuin not too far from Kumamoto and in the general direction I'm heading so that's good.  So I've booked a night at an onsen hotel there and we'll see how it goes.  Sitting in a hot spring on a hot summer's night ... I amaze myself at my idiocy sometimes.

Anyway.  The second night on the tatami wasn't as bad as the first in that I didn't injure myself any further.  It was difficult finding a comfortable position though.  I survived and I think I'm probably going to avoid tatami floors from now on.

So I'm off to a town called Beppu after check out today.  This is also a hot spring town  and they have turned a bunch of them into tourist attractions called the Beppu Hells.  Basically the silly Japanese of ages past decided the hot springs were possessed by demons or something so they became known as the hells.  As we all know the tourism industry loves this sort of shit so a tourist attraction grew out of it.

Basically there's 7 or 8 hot springs around Beppu that have various attractions related to them and the local buses go past them all.  So on the way to Yufuin I stopped in here for a couple of hours to take a look.

I believe the properties of the interesting ones are natural but they definitely have a man made feel to them.  When I was there it really felt like someone had just dodged up a tourist attraction.

Anyway. I didn't go to them all because some of them seemed pretty boring.  The first one was bubbling mud with a slight sulphur smell to it.  The next one had cobalt blue water in the spring.  There was one with crocodiles, one with different mud, a red one and one that was supposed to shoot out water quite regularly (with no indication of whether regular was every 5 minutes or every 5 hours).

The interesting ones (that I went to) were the bubbling mud which was aesthetically pleasing to me, the cobalt blue one and the red one.  The others I either didn't go to or was not interested enough to take a photo of anything.  Google if you're interested.

You could also eat eggs and other things that had been boiled or cooked using the springs or steam from the springs.  I think people were mostly doing this so they could sit in the shade or the airconditioning while they got over the heat.

Because of the hot springs the whole area was sweltering.  Add the steam and heat from the springs to the general heat and humidity of summer and everyone was a sweaty meatball.

So I finished up my hot spring jaunt and got on a local train to Yufuin.  The train ride was absolutely gorgeous.  It was an old single-car train that went up this mountainous path towards the town.  Beautiful scenery the whole way.  I stood at the front of the carriage for an hour just watching the train hurtle up the track.  Fantastic.

Arriving at Yufuin was really lovely as well.  It's a small town that's basically built around the onsen tourist industry and they have tried to maintain a traditional Japanese feel to it.  They've done a really good job as the town is really quite beautiful.  All the stores are basically restaurants or souvenir type stuff to cater for the tourists which is a bit of a downer but it's still a nice place.

I got a cab from the train station to the hotel I was staying at (actual hotel not a hostel!) which was a nice change to walking up hills.  The cab was pretty awesome.  Oldish car with a driver who is immaculately dressed in his taxi uniform.  The passenger door opens for you after the driver pulls a lever inside.  The seats inside are covered in lace or another while material.  Really nice ride and it wasn't too expensive.

Got to the hotel and checked in and the woman at the desk gave me a large sized yukata (Japanese robe) for wearing to the spring later.  Thankfully I looked it up later and sizing is based on height not girth ... but I'm still pretty sure it was a fat man robe.  Whatever ... I'm a fat man so it would have been entirely appropriate.

I'm not sure if I offended them during check-in by electing not to eat at the hotel but she seemed surprised and a bit unsure.  It kind of felt like a BnB which is run solely by the husband and wife team at the desk.  But I really wanted to walk down into town for dinner and have a look around so that's what I did.

My room was pretty nice.  I've been in much nicer hotels but I have been camping and hostelling for the last 6 weeks so this was pure luxury.  King sized bed, private bathroom, balcony with a view.  Lovely.

I wandered down into town and it was about a 15 minute walk.  As I said the town itself was nice.  Not big but one of those towns which is basically a strip mall.  One or two roads that have all the shops and businesses on them.  I was starting to worry that there wouldn't be anything open for dinner after a while but I ran into a nice little cluster of restaurants to choose from.

After see sawing between a couple (I literally walked back and forth between the two for about 5 minutes) I eventually settled on one.  Turned out to be a yakitori place!  I love yakitori!  On the downside the menu was completely in Japanese.  Thankfully one of the owners spoke some English and gave me a brief rundown of the various sections of the menu.

I actually managed pretty well once I remembered Google Translate lets you take a photo something and it will find the words on the photo and translate for you.  That worked really well once I turned the menu the right way up   #rollseyes #stupidwesterner

I had a bunch of really nice stuff and one thing that I just didn't really like at all.  It's called natto.  I'll let you google it but it's basically fermented beans or something and it had a weird stringy substance holding the beans together that sort of stretched out forever when you tried to eat it (kind of like mozzarella).  This was not a taste experience I particularly enjoyed but I did finish the bowl.  I don't even know how to describe it.

Natto

After dinner I headed back to the hotel to get in the onsen!

I look damn sexy in my yukata don't you think?

So I put that on, put my thongs on (none of the slippers in Japan fit), grabbed my little basket for my towel and other sundries (soap, washcloth, phone, key) and trundled on down to reception so they could show me where the onsen was.  I have to give someone credit because the dude at reception did not laugh when he saw me in my yukata.

Either I did an amazing job putting it on and I looked great (option 1) or the dude did a stellar job not laughing his head off (option 2).  I personally choose to go for option 1.

He lead me to the onsen and warned me very strenuously to turn RIGHT not LEFT.  Right was the men's onsen tonight and left was the women's onsen.  Never the twain shall meet at this facility (unless you hire the private one for some sexy times).  The baths would switch in the morning.

I had read up on my onsen rules before arriving so I basically knew what to do but did kind of dread it a little bit.  I'm a westerner with body image issues.  I'm not particularly keen on or used to the idea of public nudity and the onsen thing is basically bathing naked with a bunch of other people.

So I got in there, took off my gear and went to the bathing room to shower and clean myself.  You sit on a little stool in a locker room type scenario in front of a shower, soap yourself up thoroughly then rinse yourself off so you're lovely and clean before you get in the pool.  Thankfully I was alone for this process because the stool was very low.

After that you hold your washcloth over your junk and head into the onsen.  I put the washcloth on my head like the guides said but eventually I felt like a dickhead and just stuck it on the rocks at the side.

The onsen itself was absolutely beautiful.  A small pool (maybe 3 metres by 3 metres) surrounded by rocks and trees and with a gazebo over the top of most of it.  There was pleasant music playing over the speakers and you could hear the sound of water flowing into the pool to keep it topped up and hot.  The floor of the pool was a bunch of small smooth rocks and the water was clear and about 40 degrees Celsius I think.  Once I got over the whole naked in a pool thing it was absolutely relaxing.

A Japanese guy joined me for a few minutes but we each kept to our end of the pool as is default with the guy code (do anything you can to avoid seeing each other's junk in a shared space).  He only stayed for about 5 minutes though.  I think I stayed in the pool for about 20 minutes until I couldn't stand the heat any longer.  The hot water did do a great job for my sore muscles from my defeat at the hands of the tatami mat.

I hopped back out, did a quick rinse off in the shower area, put my gear back on and headed back to my room.

Where I struggled for the next hour to find somewhere to stay for the next night.  Apparently the Japanese really love to go away for the weekend!  I had intended to go stay in Hiroshima the following night but I wasn't able to find a hotel room on an aggregator site for less than about $300 a night.  Booking.com kept saying "Hiroshima is 97% booked out for these dates.  Try another date."  The other places I checked on Honshu.

So eventually I started looking on Kyushu and I got a room at a hostel in Fukuoka which is where I first entered Japan.  Kind of annoying since I didn't really have anything I wanted to do there but it was a reasonably priced bed and it would do!

And then I stretched out on my fantastic bed and went to sleep.