Our walking tour wrapped up this morning. Walk Japan was a good experience, I would do it again. I’m not sure I would make my whole trip out of it, because we do like exploring on our own. But our guide Jon led us to places that we definitely would not have discovered, and it was fun to get to know the other walkers. They were well organized, and like I said before it was nice to take a break from logistics. Vans with friendly drivers show up right when you finish one thing and take you off to the next.
Our breakfast was again a steamed tray of goodies. Steamed food sounds kind of boring, but our ryokan did a great job of making the meals flavorful. I think the key is some marinating and a dipping sauce. When we get home I think we should steam food more often, especially if we discover a thermal hot spring under our house. Here I am at our hotel’s steam cookers, right outside the lobby. Jon, our guide, is briefly turning on the steam valve.
Around Beppu there are seven “hells”, parks where mud pools blurp away and steam roars out of vents. They are all named and Beppu makes a tourist thing about making the full round (“catch ‘em all!”), getting a stamp in a booklet, etc. I suspect that most bubbling mud pits look and smell about the same. We visited just one, “Ocean Hell”, the nearest to our ryokan.
I liked this demon next to a bed of rocks that were roaring steam. The sign explains that the demon was cold after visiting the crane god (obviously there’s a back story here, but I don’t know it) and came here to wrap himself in a “futon of stones” and warm up in the steam. Ahhh.
You would think that fossil fuel poor Japan would capitalize on being located above colliding tectonic plates and tap all this energy for geothermal electricity generation. Evidently though the onsen lobby is strong, and Big Onsen has limited the construction of geothermal plants. Jon was saying that Japanese usually build a vacation around which onsen and ryokan they will visit, with surrounding sights a secondary concern. The ryokan is the focus.
On the way back from the mud pits we saw these fun characters. The raccoon dog was next to a crocodile park.
The rest of the day was travel back to Tokyo. We caught a taxi to a bus to an airport. Oita Airport. An official (the official?) Hello Kitty airport. America just does not have this level of institutional cuteness.
Ken Chin-Purcell 