Recap: Beppu Adventures

Let's take a trip back in TIME to Tuesday.  Mary had to go into school and it was raining pretty hard, which kind of ruled out sightseeing (plus, I didn't particularly feel like getting excessively lost), so I mostly just hung around Mary's place, did some tax stuff, did some paperwork for Fulbright, read a little...it wasn't all that exciting.  BUT that afternoon Tatara-san picked me up so I could go talk to this guy she knows who "knows a lot about Shinto."  As it turned out...he wasn't actually a priest, but rather a guy who wanted to be a priest but instead became a martial artist and masseuse for reasons that aren't incredibly clear to me?  But he was interesting to talk to, and had some...unusual opinions.  I doubt I'll be able to use any of it in my research paper for the end of Fulbright, but it was still interesting and gave me more opportunities to practice my poker face.

Tuesday night Mary and I went to Gyoza Kaikan, which is a restaurant that sells gyoza (potstickers, for anyone who doesn't know the Japanese term), rice, and ramen.  And nobody in their right mind orders the ramen, because their potstickers are SO DELICIOUS OM NOM NOM.  I might have eaten there three times already.  It brings a whole new level of hole-in-the-wall to hole-in-the-wall, though.  Also, the lower level of the restaurant smells very strongly of...sweat-soaked dudes (the primary clientele), I guess.  It's kind of gross, but the food is great, so I don't really care.

Anyway!

Wednesday I woke up Way Too Early to hop on a train to Fukuoka where I was supposed to take a bus with Sara and Alyssa and some of their friends to Beppu.  (You can see Sara's post as well as some other pictures of Beppu here.)  Unfortunately, it snowed a microscopic amount the previous night, which meant that the entire city of Fukuoka ground to a halt in dread and all the buses out of the city stopped running.  ALL THE BUSES.  I'd like to point out that IT WASN'T EVEN SNOWING ANYMORE.

So instead we had to take a train, which was slightly more expensive but took less time, so all's well that ends pretty okay, I guess.

We met Alex in Beppu, where, stepping outside of the station, we got our first taste of the thing Beppu is famous for:

Onsen!

Yep, Beppu is home to some of Japan's most famous onsen!  Which was basically why we were there.

Also outside of the station was this:

...I...I have no words.

Take a moment to drink in this sight.

...I...what.  WHAT.  SHINY UNCLE????

Oh, yay, there are two demon children hanging off his cloak.

Oh, and they're naked.  And apparently boys.

WHAT.

THE.

FORK.

I don't even know whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

So then we went and got lunch at this restaurant with weirdly shaped spoons, but Shiny Uncle still haunted our thoughts.

So theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen we caught a shuttle bus up the mountain to the hotel we were staying at!

It was potentially the classiest hotel I have ever set foot in, not even kidding.  There were four of us staying in one room, but our room could have easily fit 6-8 people.  Also, the view:

Beppu!

We also got yukata to change into in our rooms.

Look at me, failing at pictures whoooo.

So then we went to...THE ONSEN.

The onsen was CRAZY INTENSE.  There were gender-segregated onsen and a gender-neutral onsen that you had to wear a swimsuit into, so we went into the gender-segregated one first.  It was sooooo niiiiice and also HUGE.  It was also an actual factual onsen, which meant that it smelled vaguely of sulfur, so I now understand what rotten eggs smell like.  Anyway, there were a bunch of different pools of varying hotness, and also a cold pool for when you felt like freezing all your skin off before burning it all off again.  There were also a bunch of little old ladies who were SUPER INTERESTED in us, but especially Sara because she is WHITE.  They were all petting her skin, which, I dunno, I'd definitely find that pretty uncomfortable, but Sara handled it very classily.

I have no idea what the boys were doing at the time, but it probably looked like this:

Continuing my glorious tradition of referencing Gurren Lagann every time I go to an onsen!

We also wound up hopping into the gender-neutral onsen later, although the gender-segregated one turned out to be nicer. It was nice being able to hang out with the guys, but wearing a swimsuit in an onsen just feels really weird to me.  It would be like bathing with a swimsuit on.  I don't think I'd mind a gender-neutral actual onsen (with nudity whooo) as long as nobody got weird at me (or weirder than usual, 'cause people are usually kind of weird at me in onsen). I guess swimsuit onsen are pretty okay if you're uncomfortable with being naked around other people, though.  Although then I'd have to wonder why you're bothering going to an onsen and not a heated pool, but WHATEVER.

Our dinner was a Crazy Intense Buffet at the hotel, which had everything you could ever possibly dream of eating in your life.  I ate SO MUCH FRUIT.  And it was all delicious.

The hotel, by the way, had potentially the weirdest floor layout I have ever seen in my life.  You would walk and walk and walk for what seemed like miles, up escalators and down escalators and through twisting passageways and past that weird arcade and by that weird cow statue and EVENTUALLY you would get to the entrance to the onsen at which point you would take an elevator up a floor and then walk up more stairs and down more stairs and through more twisting passageways and EVENTUALLY you would get to the changing room.  It was preeeeeeetty weird.  I have no idea how they had all that space.  It took us an insanely long time to get to dinner, because we had to walk and walk and walk and walk.

So after dinner we played Apples to Apples and I was terribly slaughtered but it was still fun, so oh well.  And then we went for one last dip in the onsen before bed.  The funny thing about onsen is that they are EXHAUSTING.  We were laughing because it was 10:30 at night and everyone was exhausted and all we had done all day was ride a train, sit in the onsen, and eat.  Well, and walk through the hotel, I guess.

The next morning!

Sara found the smallest possible cereal spoon.

Also, she makes great faces at 8 a.m.

Alyssa and Bruce squared off against each other at That Taiko Game!

Beppu was really foggy!

I had a really long ride to Osaka, so I bid everyone else goodbye at around 11 and headed to the station.

And then I did this:

...just kidding, I actually went to Osaka, but that will have to wait until next time!

Recap: Fukuoka adventures

Recap time!  'cause I was away from Internet Land for way too long.

Also, this is post #100!  WHOO!  My computer decided to celebrate by believing that the right click is being held down, which is A. not true and B. a pain because I can't click on anything properly and so I had to disable the buttons altogether until I figure out what the heck is going on.  GUH.  Seriously, Konpyuutan, I love you dearly, but DO YOU HAVE TO BE WEIRD AT ME SO OFTEN????

Anyway, let's travel back in time to Monday, when I hopped on a train to Fukuoka to meet up with Sara* and Alyssa and Alyssa's boyfriend, Bruce.  We rode over to Dazaifu, which is an area with a bunch of shrines and temples, including this one:

(This is the temple garden, not the temple, just to be clear.)

So nice.

The weather was sort of fluctuating between sunny and COLD, which was less nice, but oh well.

So then we went to Dazaifu Tenmangu.  Bruce ran away to climb a mountain, because apparently this is what he does, so Sara and Alyssa and I got lunch and then explored.

Alyssa demonstrates proper cow-rubbing procedure!

(You're supposed to rub the cow's head and then rub your own head to make yourself SMART.)

(It didn't work on Alyssa because she is already smart.)

(Either that or she got SMARTer.)

(SO SMART.)

Some of the plum blossoms have started blooming!

The grounds are very pretty, if you couldn't already tell.

For some reason, there were about a million Korean tour groups at the shrine.  Why the heck?  It made asking people to take pictures of us very awkward, because we couldn't figure out who actually spoke Japanese...

TURTLE.

I am not obsessed with turtles, I swear.

This is the flying plum tree.

So Tenjin, who is the kami of all the Tenmangu shrines, was actually a real person who got deified.  His name was Sugiwara Michizane and he was a poet and politician and a generally really smart guy.  Unfortunately, he was too smart, got embroiled in a bit of political ickiness, was framed for a crime, and got exiled from Kyoto (the imperial capital at that time) to Kyushu (the super inaka).  Anyway, Sugiwara had a plum tree in the garden of his house in Kyoto, and apparently it dropped dead when he was exiled...only to regrow in Kyushu!  Or so the story goes.

Those eyes.

THOSE EYES.

o.o

O.O

O.O

These are gourds.  They're associated with Tenjin.

So then we went climbing up the mountain...

Oh heeeeeeeeeeeey it's an Inari.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but each bell had the kanji for one of the Chinese zodiac years on it.

Fox-face ema!

...this face will haunt my nightmares.

...why do I love this one so much.

Oh, hey, there's a random cave in the back of the shrine!

Oh, hey, it's a tiny Inari shrine inside a cave!

Watch as my camera makes everything blurry!

So then we stopped to get a special kind of mochi that's meibutsu in Dazaifu.

SO DELICIOUS.

It's grilled mochi with red bean in the middle.  It also has a little imprint of a plum blossom on top!

This is 誠の滝, which literally means the waterfall of truth/sincerity.

...this is not a true waterfall, I don't even know.

Kirin!  There's a hilarious story attached to kirin, but it's a Chinese story.  OH WELL.

And, yes, it's the kirin as in Kirin Beer.

...we're pretty sure these are owls but we don't we really know.

I'm not obsessed with plum blossoms. You must be MISTAKEN.

This is an incredibly weird building.  It houses a museum, which was closed, unfortunately, because apparently it closes on Mondays.

This was next to the museum, for some reason?  Sara said she expected there to be lions down there or something, 'cause it looked weirdly like a zoo enclosure.

SKY.

SO MANY FLOWERS.

This was the terrifyingly long escalator we took up to the museum building.

...I...I don't even know.  You could accidentally kill yourself if you stood up wrong.

This is plum soft serve.  SO DELISH.

And then I found THE BEST SCARF and it went kind of like
Me: THIS IS THE BEST SCARF.  *pets it excessively*
Sara and Alyssa: You should buy it!
Me: But but but but I never buy anything for myself.  *still petting scarf*
Sara and Alyssa: BUY IT.
Me: BUT. *still petting*
Sara: *thrusts money at me*
...I bought it.  It is THE BEST.  We are inseparable. <3

So theeeeen Alyssa had to go to Some Meeting that Wasn't with Us for Some Reason, so we headed back into Fukuoka proper, and Sara and I wandered around.

Look at that skyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

This is a recreation of one of the floats they parade around Fukuoka in a big festival (the Hakata Gion Yamakasa Festival, to be exact) at the beginning of July. This is only 80% of the regular float size.

So huge.

Apparently people carry these through the streets at 5 a.m., 'cause why not?

So then we went to Kushida Shrine, which is the shrine Hakata Gion Yamakasa Festival belongs to.

...why does it have a horn?

Here are a bunch of mikoshi.

...and here's a float.  Notice Sara in the lower right corner for size comparison.

SO.

HUGE.

Husband and wife trees!

...DANG, that is a huge float.

(This is the other side of the float, if that wasn't already obvious.)

So apparently Fukuoka is really into making walls out of bits of old walls.  And this is one of them.

So classy.

I love it when people try to tell me how super duper classy and definitely never raunchy Japan is.

Tiny Inari!

Wait, WHAT.

...wait, this torii was bought by Dragon Gate Pro Wrestling.

WHAT.

Someone is having issues understanding ema...again.

So then we wandered around Canal City (which is a shopping mall) for a while and looked at bizarre chopsticks and nearly got swept up in a mob of screaming teenagers (who were screaming because of some K-Pop group's CD release) and then we went to get Hakata ramen, which is meibutsu.

YUM.

The restaurant we ate at was super weird, though, because you sit in your own little private stall, although you can collapse the walls between the stalls if you want to eat with a friend.  Additionally, you never see the waiters and you never have to speak to anyone, because you fill out a little form telling them what kind of ramen you want and then push a button to call them, and they come to a tiny window in the front of your stall, take your paper, bring back the ramen, and then pull a screen over the tiny window.  SO WEIRD.  Apparently it's popular with women because they don't have to shout for service?

So then we headed back through Canal City toward Hakata Station...

MIND.  BLOWN.

(This is a store name, in case you need the additional context.)

And then we got a little bit lost but were saved by a nice American dude who lives in Fukuoka and showed us where the station was.  And I bid Sara good night and hopped on a train back to Takeo.

So that was Monday!  It was fun.  Thanks, Alyssa and Sara!

Unrelated note: Multiple people have now found my blog by searching for "Higashiyama Castle" (not a real place, as far as I know) and "overweight anime characters."  Wait, what.

*If you want to see Sara's side of the story as well as some photography that's much better than mine, you should click here.