Beppu, 16.05.24

We walked again from the hotel to the railway station where we had breakfast in a cute cafe, the Little Mermaid. They had good coffee and French pastries. Very good breakfast. The train left at 10.18am bound for Yawatahama, a port city where we got onto the ferry for Beppu. Yawatahama is an important port for the island of Shikoku. It is completely surrounded by mountains with only a small strip of flat land opening to the sea of Seto. The hills are covered in terraces which look like vineyards but are in fact citrus plantations especially mandarin oranges. 

Yawatahama Harbour

The port buildings are all new and very modern. Check in and boarding was as efficient as one would expect in Japan. It was a bit more than two hours to Beppu on the island of Kyushu. In a way similar to a crossing of Cook Strait from Picton to Wellington. On one side the mainland of Shikoku and on the other a long hilly peninsula with lots of windmills on the ridge. Then open sea for a while, but very calm, and then the harbour of Beppu. 

Beppu

We took a taxi to the hotel. It was not that far, closer to the centre of town and overlooking the sea. It was another one of those Kai hotels we stayed in run by the Hoshino Resorts company. This one was very new and modern and just a bit different from other chain hotels. Like along the front of the hotel on the second floor, just outside the reception and lounge area and overlooking the sea was a footbath fed by a natural spring. Very comfortable it was too. Our room overlooked the sea as well with the sun pouring in all day and a spectacular sunrise! 

Footbath

In the evening, they offered an experience which was making Japanese cookies. It was fun and unusual. For dinner we went to a local restaurant just around the corner for chicken tempura and vegetable tempura. It was a recommendation of the hotel. Earlier on we saw some other offerings in town and were not too keen to try. Below is the menu! Notice chicken gizzard and cartilage!

Menu

Beppu might almost be called the Onsen capital of Japan. There are over 150 onsen or bathing houses in the town. If one visits 88 of them and gets a stamp from each onsen then one is an 'onsen expert'. As much as I like an onsen this was a bit too much.

The area around Beppu is after Yellowstone the most active volcanic place in the world. Within a large geothermal park are seven 'hells' or pools with hot water and mud bubbling up, there are geysers and steaming ponds far too hot to enter, one is around 150 degrees Celsius! They all have names like Umi 'Sea Pond Hell' or Chinoike 'Blood Pond Hell' all part of the wider 'Beppu Hell'. One is even called 'Crocodile Hell' as there are around 70 crocodiles thriving in the hot water. 

View from room

Hotel room, Japanese style, note mattress on a platform