Seahorse Sea Hell

After roughing it in Yakushima, we headed to the hot spring mecca of Beppu. Our first night was spent in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn. Upon arriving, we immediately changed into our robes and headed down to dinner, which was quite a feast. Nate had to loosen his yukata by the end of it.


After dinner, we enjoyed a soak in a private, open-air, hot spring bath. The water was ridiculously hot and it was gloriously relaxing. There wasn't any wifi at the ryokan, so we spent most of the night catching up on Dexter (!) and watching a couple episodes of My So Called Life. It was an exciting evening.

Beppu revolves around its hot springs. Everywhere you turn there is steam escaping from some crack in the pavement. Its main tourist attractions are the nine "hells", which are hot springs too hot to bathe in, so they rope them off and charge you 400 yen to see them. We only visited two: the "Sea Hell" and the "Mud Hell". The "Sea Hell" was the more interesting one, with hot, perfectly blue water and steam billowing from the surface. The water is hot enough to cook eggs. The "Mud Hell" was pretty much just bubbling mud.


In the afternoon we found a cheesy sex museum. The place was filled with ancient and "sacred" phalli of all sizes and shapes, as well as some traditional Japanese art, and, of course, some straight up porn.

The next day we headed to Fukuoka, a main hub in Kyushu. We made a few friends, went out for some delicious ramen, then drank some whiskey with a couple of German dudes back at the hostel. They were a riot.

This morning we left Fukuoka and made the six hour journey to Tokyo. I think we saw Mt. Fuji from the train, but it was pretty cloudy, plus we were moving at like 175mph, so the photos are terrible. Don't even click on that link, it's just there for completeness.

We'll be living out of this tiny hallway for the next five nights.