Golden Week 2012 part 1: Beppu

Golden Week is a string of 5 national holidays that occur in roughly a one week period (4/29, 4/30, 5/3, 5/4, and 5/5). And so, with all these days off it`s quite common for people to go on holiday/vacations, and personally I think it is probably one of the busiest times for traveling within Japan. And of course, as I am always eager for an excuse to travel, my friends and I decided to join the masses and planned a nice trip through Kyushu for our Golden Week.

Julianne, Jessica, Ciaran and I enjoying Beppu!

April 28th

This marked the first official day of Golden week. I hadn`t made any plans for this day originally because I was keen to save money for my second half of Golden Week. And after some discussion with some other Yamaguchi ALT`s who had no plans for the day we decided to drive to Costco in Fukuoka. I was surprised to see they didn`t sell a number of the things I was hoping to buy (Colgate/Crest Toothpaste, Refried Beans) and I was also surprised by some of the things they did have (really odd Japanese cleaning products, gallon packets of kim chee). I had to remind myself that while Costco is an American franchise they of course have to market their products for Japanese consumers. But overall I came out with a fairly decent haul of things for not too bad of a price. I bought, a tin of rasberries (which the evil costco employee placed at the bottom of my Costco-sized shopping bag, thus squishing them, grrr.), a tin of black berries, a brick of American Chedder Cheese, a wedge of Gouda cheese (imported from Holland, legit), some baby leaf lettuce, 2 canisters of guacamole, 2 tubs of salsa, 2 bottles of cranberry juice, Spinach and Mozarella ravioli, and other odd bits that I cant recall off the top of my head.

Another major success of the day was that while driving home we also stopped by a shopping market, I think the name is Sunny (or something like that). And the reason why we made the special trek to this particular grocery shop was that it is one of only a handful of places in Japan that have recently began to sell Resses Peanut Buttercups. So, I now have a stock pile of Reese`s sitting in my kitchen. Happy Day!

This also marked the first day that I have ever driven on the IC/expressway. There are 2 major reasons I`ve been a bit hesitant to drive on the expressway before and here is why.
1) The expressway is expensive to use since the entire length of it is a toll road. In general the amount you pay is determined by how far you drive, but some of the smaller expressways you pay a set fee. The cost to use the expressway for an average sized car is about $0.50 per mile plus an initial $1.88 terminal charge. So,  driving a mile on the expressway costs you about $2.40. But really, the expressway is usually used for traveling longer distances. On our way back from Costco our toll cost about $50.00.

2) And here is the second reason I haven`t driven on the expressway before.            

                               

May 3rdLet the Kyushu Roadtrip Begin!

      Here is a map of the route/sights visited during Golden Week (yellow and green dashes) 

This was the real beginning of my Golden Week plans. And here is a general outline, as well as a few anecdotes about our travels.

 The night before, Julianne, Jessica, and I stayed the night with Ciaran at his home in Yanai so that we would all be together in a fairly convenient location to begin our adventure. That morning we woke up quite early got into the car and drove about an hour to Tokuyama ferry port and loaded our car and ourselves onto the ferry and settled in for our boat ride to Oita. Seeing as it was Golden Week (the busiest travel time of the year) the ferry was fairly crowded with other passengers and so the 4 of us opted to sitting on the rooftop deck of the ferry alongside a group of Highschool and Junior highschool girls who were going on a school trip. And the next 2 hours were spent having conversations in Japanese/English with curious school girls, toddlers, and other inquisitive passengers.

Awesome Yamaguchi ALT Ciaran and I with some Inquisitive Passangers

 Once we arrived in Oita we said farewell to all of our new friends, piled into the car and requested that Betsey set our coordinates to direct us safely and soundly to Beppu.  Seeing as I had done the first shift of driving for the day I decided to let Ciaran be in charge of driving us from the ferry port to Beppu, which Betsey kindly informed us would take about 2 hours. I think Betsey must have selected the most sceneic route because instead of traveling a legitimate looking road we ended up taking off along some of the smallest country roads, which Ciaran maneuvered quite nicely. However, about an hour into our drive while cruising along at around 45mph (73km/h) what should happen, we got pulled over by police, for speeding! Japan has ridiculously low maximum speed limits, the road we were driving along had a the speed limit set for about 31mph (50km/h). And we were then held up for an hour while the cops went through the standard (and some not so standard) procedures of interrogation. `Where are all of you from?` (Ireland, Hawaii, Chicago) `Sir, you know why we pulled you over?`(Yes), `Do you know what the speed limit is?` (yes), `Where are you going?` (Beppu), `Why are you going this way, this is very out of the way! (Betsey told us too). `You are a really handsome chap, do you have a girlfriend?` (No), `You said your friend is from Hawaii, is it very nice there, I`ve never been. By the way, what did you eat for breakfast your breath reeks of garlic.`, and so on for an hour. The police then proceeded with insulting me by questioning my abilities to drive because of the fact that I am a female. Sexist much?!?!?

About halfway through the interrogation

 After the interrogation and a brief stop at the police station we finally got to continue on our journey to Beppu. Thankfully, the police station was along the way and so once we were through with that we only had about a 30 minute drive to get to Beppu.

A leisurely stroll 

  Due to a high level of geothermal activity Beppu is most famous as being an Onsen (hotspring) resort. The city is literally surrounded by hot springs. While walking along the streets steam rises up from the drains and out of every possible crack in the ground. At night it was a pretty ethereal experience because there were colored spot lights set up amongst many of the steam vents. Anyway, that night we decided to eat a really interesting meal at the tourist information office where you cook your dinner (fish, meat, veggies, whatever you like) using the onsen/hotspring steam. It was really delicious, but we were a little overzealous in our excitement to try this odd meal and ended up ordering way too much food. After dinner, a few rounds of drinks, and aimless wandering we ended up at one of the larger bathing onsens (around 11pm, nbd) and spent around an hour and a half soaking in water and relaxing in a hot sand bath before calling it a night.

Our dinner getting steamed

10 minutes later and some of our veggies and dumplings are ready to eat!

Sand bath at Hyotan Onsen (photo courtesy of Google)

The next morning we woke up early to visit 2 of the 9 famous "hells" in Beppu. These hotsprings are referred to as hells due to their resemblance of the Buddhist vision of hell. These 9 hells have extremely high temperatures and different unique characteristics (one is bright blue, another is red, etc.). We visited Umi Jigoku (Sea Hell) and Yama Jigoku (Mountain Hell).

Umi Jigoku. Not the best photo, but I liked that you can clearly see a differentiation in color between the hot spring and the normal water in the background. (90degrees C)

Yama Jigoku, a mud volcano that spouted so much mud it became a small steaming mountain surrounded by muddy pounds reaching 90degrees C. The steam at this "hell" is so strong that it could pull one and a half train cars. 

And that is all for this post! There should be two or three more Golden Week posts for you to look forward to in the future!

Things to look forward to: The rest of my Golden Week, I took a practice driving exam today and next week I am going to attempt to get my Japanese driver's license (ganbarimasu!!!), I've also been offered an interview on a Japanese television program only problem is that I am scheduled at school the day they want to film, so I'm currently in negotiations to see if we can possibly reschedule for another day (wish me some luck on that front!).

Leaving Beppu and off to our next destination! Look out for the next update to learn more!

Until next time!

Keri