Hello! I am not keeping up at all with posting! We continue travelling around the country and are currently in Nagano. Hiked in snow today!
a bit different from today’s post from three of the seven Hell’s in Beppu!!
I don’t have my notes or maps in front of me so we are just going to have to wing it here. Basically there are 7 super hot springs boiling away that you can visit. Definitely not for bathing.
I think the first one we visited was the prettiest. The gardens and grounds were gorgeous.
Actually there were some spots you could have a foot bath. We didn’t though.
Amazing water colour here! Definitely hell like!
Yet on the other side of the building was another pool… Of this superb colour! Hissing and spitting away!!
On the end of the pole I suspect they were cooking a crate of eggs! It was all the rage to eat an egg cooked in the hot springs!
The smell was a bit whiffy ….
I am going to be lazy and just whack in the photos with minimum blather as I still need a shower and get to bed as there is another full day to do tomorrow!
We moved on to another Hell that was famous for the smooth bubbling clay.
It was only mildly bubbling.
Again, they set things out very aesthetically
Another footbath
Steamy rocks
And on the the third hell where they had bubbling mud and pretty pools!!
Well, there you have it! Some of the very cool natural hot springs of Beppu!
Hello… We’ve travelled a lot since I was last here. We left Kyushu, went to Shikoku and as of yesterday, we are in Nikko… North of Tokyo!! I am seriously going to need to sleep for a week when we get home.
until then… The adventures continue.
So, Rachel trotted off to Hiroshima and Jeff and I went to Beppu, a town renowned for its numerous hot springs!
Dunno who the guy is but… He is outside the station. Speaking of the train station… Cracked me up every time we got to the station. The town is pronounced ‘Be’ (short vowel as in bed) then ‘poo’
but the train platform announcement did it in a hilarious way… The ‘poo’ was done at a much higher pitch. I wish I had a recording.
Anyway, we found our hotel and settled in. (Which in our case means…. Made a big mess of the room)
Before mess.
We booked in to a private bath, popped on our provided yukatas, toddled over the road and scrubbed up!
The first night we had the mosaic bath
There is a spot for your clothes etc
Then there is the spot for you to sit and soap up and wash
Then there you hope in the scalding hot volcano heated waters and relax!!
It flows out of the corner here.
Jeff did well to stay in as long as he did. I cope with the hot water better. But I do jump out and get under the cold shower and go back in again.
The second night we went to the cedar bath tub
Washing spot had two showers…
Nice but seemed hotter than the first one!
Then on the last night I went off down the street with my bath bag…
Posting pic again because I love it…
To the oldest bath house in Beppu
Takegawara Onsen.
and damn that water is HOT!! It was such a fabulous building. But I was pink by the time I got out!!!
Hotel view
Local street view. Er… We might have been in a red light district. There were some… Interesting sights 😂😂
Leaving Nagasaki was a bit rushed and I felt I didn’t give Noz enough hugs before we went through the gates. She was an absolute champion helping us secure our tickets for the next few sections of travel. After a few fancy xxpants Shinkansen trains, we ended up on an Agatha Christie esque train that meandered through the countryside at a bit of an amble.
It gave us time to take snaps and as the train had barely any people, we could all jump from seat to seat to admire the views
Everyday farm and country town scenes
Its was really relaxing
It was exciting to see the mountain ranges appear
Love seeing the rivers
When we got to Aso, we has a few hours to kill before we could check in, so we wandered all over the place.
Thanks to Rachel for this and the following pics. All mine are on the Nikon.
I’d always wanted to visit Mt Aso… Back in my days of living in Japan, I used to collect phone cards… They had lots of cool pictures and designs. One of my favs were the Mt Aso photos.
Basically there is a big ring of mountains and the area is collectively known as Mt Aso
It was pretty easy to take the bus up to the crater on the first day. Amazing seeing the venting steam billowing out.
BTW last eruption was 2021 I think.
Rugged and beautiful scenery!!
We opted out of doing the big climb on the first day… We knew it was going to take time and we’d spent so much time oggling the steam and surrounds, we felt safer to come back on a dedicated climbing mission,
So we found another smaller hike behind the museum and shops to do… And it was lovely… Quiet with gorgeous views
We were super lucky with the weather too
Spectacular!
Time to head back and indulge in the hot springs..
I can’t show you pictures of Rachel And I in the bathhouse… You’re welcome lol… But it was amazing to bathe in water heated by a volcano!
And I have the perfect onsen bag… Kitty in the bath haha
Anyway, I need to bug Rachel for photos of our climb the next day.
we just got into Kochi in Shikoku this afternoon!! We are all done for the day and in bed… Like it’s not even 8pm haha. So sad.
Our time with Nozomi, Tetsu, Maru and Tsuki went all too fast!
Here is a little final roundup of our lovely relaxed country days.
One day we all set off to walk down the mountain to the village to eat magnificent ramen at Tetsu’s restaurant.
Being a busy Mum and host to multiple international working guests, Nozomi had never walked down to the restaurant like some of her worker would do.
It was the girls first time too.
It was wonderful to walk. You see so much more than whizzing by on a train or in a car.
You get to say hi to the small locals too
Persimmons are ready… Unfortunately lots will go to waste as a lot of properties are intended or abandoned.
Many properties are being slowly reclaimed by nature
This place is visited and tended to reasonably regularly…
But not this one!
One one memorable afternoon, my once City Boy Husband, found himself loading a goat into a tiny truck.
Lucky goat off on a holiday to make little baby goats!
There were the usual performances put on by the girls… Cute little acts so we got to ooo and ahhh, giggle and clap!
Our last night, Tetsu put on a fabulous BBQ… Altho the temps dropped so we all decided eating indoors was best!
Wagyu beef, chicken and squid!!
I helped Nozomi make up some onigiri (rice balls)
Add in some tofu, salad and baked spuds and voila! Good times!
And here is one of the cutest things.
The girls decided that Jeff, with all his white hair was actually Santa San!! Jeff gleefully totally joined in on this and got them to do a Christmas wish for a present.
Haha… It was something a little more expensive, so he’s done the right thing, written them a letter from Santa San and given over some extra yen to parents to make it happen!!
Hello! I have a few quiet days ahead so I’ll try to catch up a bit on stories!!
Last week, Nozomi drove us over to Arita so we could try not to buy ceramics.
While over all there were plenty of shops for us to look in, and lots of beautiful pieces to agonise over, it’s almost a ghost town with so many places shut and not many people visiting.
A stark contrast to last year when I was lucky enough to be here for the ceramics festival!!
The amazing wall made of kiln bricks and pottery bits
We popped in to so many shops. If they had all been open there would be no way we would have been able to leave within daylight hours!
I didn’t take pics of the work from the high end stuff… Felt weird. But sometimes even the more mass produced stuff is fun to rummage about in.
Lots of interesting details all over the place if you are prepared to look around.
His and Hers loo signs in ceramics for example.
Random wall parts
Some kind of lantern?
Creative cafe frontage
A closer look at the water trough
Alleyways…
Driveway embellishments
Pavers
A massive 1000 year old Gingko tree!
Still too warm and the leaves are resolutely not turning yellow yet.
ok… Maybe I see a bit of yellow…
Many owls…
Overall, we all had a fun day out together, hanging out, oohing and ahhing over gorgeous ceramics, chatting to locals, eating…
We hope this sleepy little town comes back to life and people discover all its delights!
Actually I am a bit ahead of myself as we did get a flight across before jumping on the ferry. A typhoon was supposed to hit but it skirted the area so we got nothing more than the equivalent of a testy Tasmanian day weather wise.
We do have a 2 week JR rail pass but will not put that into action until we leave Mt Aso. Unfortunately the much increased price of the pass has made it barely better value for the two weeks of intense travel coming up and the math said… Don’t buy an extra week. Flying was cheaper and faster to get ourselves to Nagasaki. We have been staying with Nozomi and family too so we haven’t been near a train since we arrived!
It was so easy taking the bus from Kyoto to the domestic airport in Osaka, booking in, then once arrived we strolled through almost non existent crowds to the ferry terminal. Doing this cut a couple of hours drive out for Nozomi.
Just a little ferry and pretty relaxing
And then up to spend some wonderful relaxing days…
Stunning views
Beautiful home
Nestled in the mountainside, Nozomi and family enjoy a tranquil space.
Nozomi organises their home to host workaway guests who come to help do work on the property. They come from all over the world so the girls are getting fantastic exposure to different languages and cultures.
In the meantime, her husband Tetsu runs a fabulous ramen shop called Ki Tsu Tsu Ki. (Woodpecker) He has built this business up from scratch and it’s really popular! And the dishes taste amazing.
slowly they are working on projects around the house… Creating little garden beds…
And a chook house…
Next is to create a safe run for the chooks
They have some goats on a shared bit of land
Rachel has become instantly popular with the girls!
And Nozomi has been cooking up a storm for us… Occasionally I remember to take photos before eating everything!! Plus we are getting fresh rice as her in-laws own rice fields!
So good!!
Anyway, We’ve been loving the slower paced family life, catching up with friends and seeing a different side of the country!
We only have one more day… so our week has slipped by quite fast despite the less crazy pace!!
Once again I have borrowed Rachel’s images as I only used my big camera yesterday. Thanks Rachel!!
So… We went over to Fushimi Inari with the intent to hike all the way up and around the little mountain. Something I had wanted to do for years… Just for one reason or the other… Not managed it.
We didn’t go super early… Early enough but the crowds were out in force..
Being a very popular and picturesque spot. I (very wrongly) assumed we would leave a lot of the crowd behind once we walked up past the first bit.
nup uh.
So many people seemed to have a very similar idea.
So yesterday we got a full dose of peak tourism haha.
Still… It was Rachel’s first time to the shrine and we really enjoyed seeing the rest of the area. It’s just amazing. The Tori gates go on and on!!
Businesses buy a tori gate and have their name etched into the pillars and the date. With the idea that good business fortune will favour them.
I like all the nooks and crannies of the stone shrines tucked into the hillside.
And seemingly forgotten small tori piled up here and there
You can still see in one spot, lots of bunches of origami cranes
Lots of small shrines are dotted about too
The hike is a bit of a circuit once you reach a certain point.
At the highest point of Mt Inari, there is a slightly larger shrine…. But around the sides and back are plenty more tori gates stacked up!
And yes… The couple you can kinda see in the above pic really did walk up to the top in beautiful kimonos including traditional shoes…and the young lady still looked elegant and fresh as a daisy! Totally take my sweaty hat off to her!!
Today we have been organising our packs as it’s our last day in Kyoto. We plan to take our friends out to dinner tonight… Then it’s off to Nagasaki if I got all the flight details right!! Eeep.
Apparently the current typhoon is skirting the area… Which is good but the first day or so will be …. Soggy!
This trip I wanted to add in some experiences… as I love the workshops at home. I found this fantastic setup in Kyoto that we were all on board with having a go at, so I booked it.
It wasn’t too far from where we are staying and Mari, being the amazing friend she is, went to work early to put us on the correct buses which got us very near the workshop.
The fellow who runs it gave us a quick rundown on what we do. Choose a design and an article to transfer the design to. Jeff and Rachel chose t-shirts and I chose a half sized noren (doorway hanging).
There were a billion image options… so hard to choose. The workshop was full of gorgeous examples of the art, along with lots of bits and bobs that would be used in various print creations.
Luckily we arrived a bit early as it was so hard to choose
The whole workshop was fabulous to look at.
So, anyway, time to knuckle down and start. We got a few minutes of practice time. How to dip the brushes into the hot wax, how much to scrape off before applying to the material. Too soon the practice cloth was whipped away and on with the real thing. We felt a bit under prepared haha
We were working on a light box so we could see the image… So it was basically tracing the wax over the lines.
Once that was done, we had to turn off the light box, remove the image and then retrace a second layer… Ensuring a nice whiter image to be left at the end.
I wasn’t convinced that it was going to look ok lol. And there was this cute little grannie who was running about instructing people too… She wanted me to do something to my moon…. In the end after I got it totally wrong she coloured it in for me haha.
She was very nice to Jeff and kept telling him he was doing a fantastic job!
Teachers pet…
I didn’t get pics, but once waxing was done, we got kitted up in gumboots, aprons, gauntlets and gloves and dunked the articles into the dye vat. For 8 minutes it was our job to keep them reasonably submerged.
This area was a great sloshy wet area
There was a bit of theatre as each article was taken out, wrung out and briefly pegged or hung so we could see the results!
I was rapt with my noren design…
Rachels t-shirt turned out fantastically…
(I had to take snaps later last night as I only had video of their shirts)
Rachel as also fallen in love with my favourite Japanese characters and did a lovely job with hers
Love Jeff’s tshirt too… He added the grasses freestyle and it turned out so well…
The butterfly is actually a mon… A family crest. It turned out so well!
After the first showing, the articles went back in for a wash to get rid of the wax… Very hot washes.
The first wash gets rid of about 90% of the wax then the last hot wash with soap sorts the last bit.
They are then rinsed in a few more buckets and popped into a mad spinner and finish up merely damp not wet!!
I think we were there for about 2 hours or so!! The cost was only Y3600 (maybe about $40 Australian bucks) so a very inexpensive mornings cultural activity! I’d totally do it again!!
We had a bit of a rest day today… although Jeff tackled the buses to go into town. A few hiccoughs in the getting back process but he is home so that’s a win!
Last Friday, we met up with Yuri again and went up to Takao where there was the start of a Riverside hike.
We had a lovely day! The weather was perfect. We’d grabbed some lunch from one of the million convenience shops so we could picnic somewhere and off we went.
(All the photos here are Rachel’s as mine are only on the big camera.)
The hike was about 11kms and it was a fairly easy route along the river. Not too many dramatic hills. The scenery was gorgeous. It was slightly cooler here… And we only saw about 10 to 15 others on the track for the entire 4 hours.
Most of the walk had flat formed paths, only a few other sections had more rocky uneven patches.
There were teahouses along the Riverside in some tiny towns. The one below reminded us a bit of the bath house in Spirited Away (a Ghibli Studio movie that is totally my favourite)
This interesting side water race next to the dam is there so the fish can access going up or down…
Lots of lovely mosses… That of course Yuri was taking photos of.
We had another Spirited Away moment with this road into the tunnel.
Sadly we didn’t come out at an abandoned theme park or bath house…
The last part of the walk was by the roadside…
Thats our train station all the way over there!!
We had such a nice day and a change from doing city stuff… Very much enjoyed!
We’ve just had a really excellent three days with our friend Yuri who visited us in February for our epic Tasmanian hike. It was so good to see her again! And she took us to some super places.
Our first stop was back up into the country on the little railway line to a superb garden. Hakuryuen Garden. (Meaning White Dragon)
Its not open all the time… Just in spring and autumn. They also limit amount of guests allowed in at one time. So it’s very peaceful (note… It’s a good idea to book to be safe esp if you want to visit in a busy season)
Yuri, as you might remember, is an expert on moss gardens and publishes books, does garden tours and is a garden designer! She shared so much interesting information!!
(information taken from pamphlet)
In 1962, Shoichi Aono, acquired the land…in the country of Ninose on the way to Kurama…and knew of the areas sacred histories and legends. He decided to restore the sacred sites, revive the land and create the gardens into the mountainside. It has been kept in the Aono family and still evolving today.
And by lucky chance… We met the son of the gardens creator who now owns the garden!!
The founder took the initiative to create Haku Ryu En, clearing the trackless land… A place where heavy machinery wasn’t available and carrying stones by hand, constructing the elements step by step. His family members, employees and even locals helped.
Its a lovely place to walk around. It was also cooler in the more mountainous area.
I loved the moss and wavy path set through it.
Yuri was on hand to tell us about the different mosses
There were small features and large all around.
We chatted to the head gardener… Nice man. I have photos of him on my other camera. Apparently the most annoying daily task is to clean up all the deer poo before visitors arrive!!
We love the stone basins and bamboo pipes
This place is going to be extra spectacular in a few weeks when the leaves get around to changing.
People also book this special place for wedding photos.
You can imagine a photographer getting creative with this space!
(Jeff’s very cool photo)
Anyway …. After getting our fill of this magnificent place, we grabbed a taxi and went down to Daitokuji where Yuri had booked us in to a special lunch… A zen Buddha vegetarian lunch.
It. Was. Amazing
Several dishes in the set menu kept coming out and each one was like a little work of art. They started with green tea and a sweet! Then moved on to the above dishes…
I just can’t tell you what each thing was. Yuri was explaining things along the way…
Above was one of Rachel’s dishes… She chose a slightly larger set menu. Being a vegetarian she made the good choice to go a bit bigger, knowing all the food was suitable. So pretty!
So delicate with the tiny flower garnish
I felt guilty eating and ruining that pretty leaf!
Even a small dish of tempura! Followed up with a really especially tasty rice and a mushroom soup!
We were all so rapt with this exciting lunch!
We then went to a couple of the temples in Daitokuji. Most pics are on the big camera, but you can see the amazing raked garden. The whole area was peaceful and we took time to sit and exchange some presents
Again, this area isn’t on the super intense tourist route, so it’s not a bad place to seek out as everything was amazing and not overcrowded.
The last place we went to was in the same complex… But more special and sacred. Lots of small tea houses tucked in a garden area… I need to find the pamphlet to describe it better. No photos were allowed.
at each shrine or temple, Jeff has been getting the monks to sign his special book. You pay a fee and they do some fab calligraphy along with the temple stamp. This one the head monk did for Jeff… But for free!! It was great watching him write it.
Jeff will have a wonderful collection by the time we are done!!
And to finish our day we went off to a little coffee shop where the owner by chance happened to go to kindergarten with Yuri! We enjoyed drinks and cake… And I collected another cute slight mistranslation…. I am just so caught up on the idea of a Hum Sandwich!!
