Today we went to Hell. Well, 7 of them. Beppu has 7 naturally occurring hot springs that are so so hot they are too hot for people or animals, but perfect for devils and demons and critters from hell!
A long day like today needs a hearty breakfast, and that's what the Seaside Mimatsu hotel served as, once again, we were faced with a huge meal of small dishes, all of which were very traditional. My favorite was definitely the egg custard-y dish as it was sweet and yummy! We had a tiny little grill overtop another small flame to cook a piece of fish and a fish cake as well as a cube of tofu we boiled and then put in some soy sauce and added onions to. The fish was... bony. Not something we can get past yet. The tofu was yummy though!
Either way, we ate a lot and were ready to face this long day full of bus rides and walks from hell to hell (or jigoku). At the Beppu station there was a counter where we bought a 1-day bus pass to ride the buses around Beppu and to the hells, as well as a packet with tickets to go into the hells, all bundled up in a day pass that cost significantly less than if we paid for each of the buses and entry fees.
So the hells usually have some sort of mineral or rock type that makes it special, as well as the fact that most of them were well over 70 degrees Celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit)! Some were red with iron, some gloopy with clay, some blue with iron sulfate, one was a geyser, one was full of crocodiles... Okay, that one was not in the actual hot spring, they had a separate area where they said the warm water conditions were great for crocodile breeding. We made many Cardassian jokes. We got there in time to see them feed the crocodiles and the reaction of the kids was hilarious!
For lunch, after completing 5 of the 7 hells, we randomly went into a chicken tempura place (when in Beppu, you eat toriten). It was called Toriten Kannawa and had one guy, the chef, a bar to eat at, and 10 seats. Two were empty, so we shrugged and sat down. This guy was talking up a storm, hamming it up, supposedly talking about the history of Beppu and its hot springs, mainly to the group of 6 old people that were all together as a group. When they left he did his best to talk to us, mentioning how one of the temples nearby, Kamado, inspired the guy who created the anime Demon Slayer. Have we seen it? Do we like it? Do we like onsen? Our half of the conversation were a lot of "hai!"s and sounds of interest and disbelief. LOL For being just one guy with a motormouth he still was able to whip up tempura'd chicken and veggies on rice for everyone there and holy cow was that chicken good! It was easy to chew, fresh and salty. Mmmm, so good on rice! I wish I had room to finish all of it but I sadly left a veggie or two uneaten, but it was delicious!
Since the last two hells were about a 10 minute bus ride in the opposite direction, I wanted to go to an onsen I had seen reviewed online that allowed the reservation of a small, private onsen and tattoos were allowed. Hyotan Onsen has about 12 private rooms with a tub large enough for 2-3 people to soak in. You reserve it at the front desk and they give you a key and a token. You place the token in this box at the room entrance and the hot springs water starts filling the onsen tub. It was really cool! I had never seen that before! It made for a nice, hot, relaxing bath. Almost a little too hot! There was a second tub you could fill with cold water and I filled it up about calf-height and just kinda splashed it on myself to cool down every 10 minutes or so. That water it hot hot HOT! It was also nice to have a tub large enough to share it with Jeff, and the two of us were able to relax together. I'm really glad we took the time to go and check it out!
After our hour was up in the private family onsen room (named Hotaru - firefly) we walked back up to the bus stop near the toriten place and caught the next bus to the last two hells. One was the BLOOOD hell (hint: the water was red, but looked more like tomato soup) and the last one was the geyser that shot up every 40 minutes. Now, we had a decision to make: stay and wait about 30 minutes for the geyser and then get stuck in the bottleneck of everyone trying to catch the same bus OR go hunt down this steamed custard pudding place Satoshi had raved about on a Tabi Eats episode. Pudding or crowds? Uh, no contest!
Okamotoya is a restaurant that has a lot of foods they steam in the hot spring water: eggs, vegetables, noodles, but most importantly--pudding! We had to take two different busses and it took us maybe 20 minutes total to get there but it was a nice little shop at the top of a steep hill (where we made sure to sit where you can't see this for Jeff's vertigo). The pudding was indeed delicious, and Jeff's ice cream was pretty darn tasty too (no, they did not steam the ice cream) but the eggy, sulfur smell of the hot springs was starting to get to me. While the city doesn't always smell like it, there are many steam vents and places that use the steam (like this restaurant) where it gets pretty intense and my nose just kinda gave up and started to give me a headache :(
Fortunately, the bus was able to take us all the way back to Beppu tower on the coastline, just a block away from our hotel where we partook in Tylenol and chilled for an hour. I still wasn't 100% feeling better nor was I terribly hungry, but about two blocks away was a restaurant I had been wanting to try: Royal Host. Now this is probably like someone coming to America and being like "I've always wanted to eat at Ponderosa!" but I've heard a couple YouTubers rave about their omurice, and boy do I love my omurice! (I'm just now wondering if perhaps my headache came on from too much sun and maybe consuming so many eggs? LOL) It was a decent omurice, for sure, but I'm a fan of my homemade omurice with good ol' ketchup on top instead of a fancy demi glace.
I toyed with the idea of going for an hour of karaoke at a little place under the Beppu tower but decided I was just too tired. So I had another good soak in the tub in our room and wrote this blog entry.
Tomorrow we leave Beppu for the last stop of our trip: Fukuoka. It's all gone so fast! :(
Jeff, what's the word, bird?
This will be a bit scattershot, even for me, so here... we... go~
The thing to remember about Ponderosa is that it's the reason I'm aware of Dance Dance Revolution and why I don't trust anyone named Phil, so it holds an important place in my heart. So of course I wanted to go to Japan's Ponderosa Without The Buffet/Salad Bar. It was pretty decent. Would I purposefully seek it out on a future trip? Probably not. If someone was like "hey, I'm feeling like hitting up the Royal Host, you wanna come with?", I'd be on board.
I only ever take baths while on vacation in other countries, because our current tub is... not conducive to baths. Maybe in the future, we'll have a better one. Anyway, I bring this up because I've been bathing like a 19th century Japanese noble; an average of two times a day and very luxuriously.
Inexplicably, Monchichis (the 1980s Cabbage Patch rip-off Monkey things) are still very popular - well, at least popular enough to necessitate having them for sale at multiple Jigokus today. Which, I guess, is why they're hellscapes.
Of all the various and sundry Jigokus, I wanted at least one to be a festering pit of corruption that also happens to have a colony of Nezumi who live nearby because they're immune to the Shadowlands Taint and no one will mess with them there. Alas, that was not the case.
You know me, I'll try anything twice, but I am not a fan of Kaiseki - whether it be breakfast or dinner. I would like one or two things that I enjoy rather than 13 things that I may or may not enjoy. Such is life in the neurodivergent zone, I guess.
Beppu is a fine town. Would I come here again? Maybe. Would I rather go to Hakone if I wanted a hot springs vacation? Probably.
That's all I've got. We'll do this again tomorrow!
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