That's right, it was another travel day! Today we took our day bags that we packed with 2-days' worth of clothing and checked out of the Mitsui Garden Hotel in Kumamoto. With check out being at 11:00 we had plenty of time to sleep in, lounge around, and make sure we didn't leave anything behind.
So, to get to Beppu the best way is through the mountains, but that's just for the scenic train, and those cost monies, even with a rail pass, and also it has one time and that was at 9:11 a.m. We no longer had that option, but that's okay! There are plenty of shinkansen and express trains that can take you a more round-about route, but still takes about 3 hours total. Instead of going east, straight through the mountains like the scenic train, the shinkansen instead takes you north, back up to Fukuoka and then at Hakata station we took the Sonic 883 express train which goes along the coast north, north east, and then east, finally stopping in Beppu.
Jeff and I had to on the aisle seats across from each other since there were no "together" seats left in the non-smoking train cars, but that's fine. Jeff watched his YouTubes and I read my ebooks. Jeff's seatmate on the Sonic 883 train asked Jeff if we were friends and Jeff said "actually, wife" and he was like "Oh! No, here, sit together!" so that was super nice of him. Also, my seatmate had been quiet but seemed to be more comfortable and began talking to Jeff's seatmate when we switched seats. So maybe they became friends! That would be nice!
It is a 3 hour train ride total, with 2/3 of that journey being on the Sonic 883, so Jeff and I both had ekiben we bought in Kumamoto. Jeff's was a katsu sando and mine was rice with meats and stuff and came in a cute, plastic Kumamon bento container you can wash out and keep! Nice!
As we have been doing on this trip, we arrived about an hour and a half before check in so we dropped our daybags at the hotel and walked down the street to the good ol' Don Quijote ("Donki") with our favorite penguin in a santa hat: Donpen. Think of it as...Big Lots. If Daiso is Dollar Tree then Donki is Big Lots. Still cheap and lots of stuff but more than a dollar or hundred yen. And it's so packed in there with so many colorful signs it's like a sensory-overwhelming maze.
A maze that couldn't hide the cute Pokemon merch from us though! I hemmed and hawed, not wanting to buy anything big but this small Alteria plush is so friggin adorable, and she IS my second favoritest Pokemon (Mewtwo is the best but it's tough to make a cute plushie of him). I also bought Quagsire hairclips because who can resist cute, derpy hair clips?!
We also bought one of each of our favorite uncrustable sandwiches they have at Donki that we'll have to try later! We already know we like the egg sando and the peanutbutter one, but we also got tuna mayo and a mozzarella and tomato! It should be interesting! Jeff got a Dr Pepper and then was amazed that it was bottled by Coca Cola and I'll let him explain why this was so amazing. [Dr Pepper is bottled by Keurig-DrPepper in the US and Europe, but has licensed their production in Asia/Oceania to Schwepp's - you know, the fourth best Ginger Ale in the US. Turns out that Schwepp's couldn't handle the volume, or didn't want to, so they subcontracted it out to Coca-Cola. And that's how one of Dr Pepper's biggest rivals ended up producing it in Japan.]
I also was unable to resist the gachapon at the front of the store and got a little train speaker replica that apparently makes an announcement for a train and then plays the little tune for that stop! About 8 years ago I was OBSESSED with trying to find a gachapon that was similar to this that played the Yamanote line songs so I was super happy to find they made something similar! Mine apparently plays the tune "Water Crown" which you can listen to here.
Donki is such a wonderful store and a great way to waste some time. By the time we were finished shopping it was time to check in! Our stay in Beppu is a hotel called the Seaside Hotel Mimatsu Ooetei. I made sure to reserve a room with it's own onsen bath because of my tattoos, but the guy at the front desk said the hotel is tatoo friendly and I can even use the public bath on the roof if I want! Yay! But I dunno, our room is really REALLY nice and I am in love with our little cypress soaking bath in our room. It has a window that looks out across the sea (and a smoky, lit-up, industrial port) and I can make it SUPER hot and it is SO RELAXING and amazing to be able to take a soak whenever I want. I've done it twice now today! LOL! Soak #1 was right after we got settled into our rooms. Jeff went first while I read my ebook and then it was my turn. Ugh, it was fantastic!
While I was in there Jeff went back to Donki to buy an HDMI cable because our room actually has a decent size TV in it! Usually these Japanese hotels have small screens but this larger one is perfect for Jeff to play his new Zelda game on! He brought his USB-C to HDMI converter box (just a little thing we bought a while ago) and all we needed was the HDMI cable and he easily and cheaply got that at Donki!
He played that and I read for an hour and then it was dinner time. I payed to have a kaiseki dinner here, which is a meal of many, many small dishes of seasonal vegetables and local fish. There was sashimi and chawanmushi and two small bits of wagyu ( best part, by far) and mushrooms and eggplant and a nabe pot full of seafood and veggies and rice you put in the remaining nabe broth and clear soups and tempura and strawberry mousse. SO MUCH FOOD! Of course we were unable to finish it all, but we tried everything! I think any one thing by itself would have been great, but it was a lot to eat and since it's Japan, everything has a strong taste of fish, so the last dish, dessert, was a welcome and refreshing change. Definitely something I enjoyed but so heavy I think I can only enjoy it once! Two days in a row would be too much!
We went for a walk at the ocean wall where the sun had already set (it was about 7:30 already) and it was windy and that day's big rain clouds were being blown away. We saw some kids doing what looked like a TikTok and guys on loud motorbikes popping wheelies down the main street. We observed the lovely Beppu tower. It was a nice walk. We may have also found enough room to buy a small sweet or two from Lawsons to bring back to our room... >_>
I took bath #2 when we got back to our rooms and Jeff played more Zelda, and now I'm here, typing this up, sitting in my yukata and feeling nice and relaxed.
Until next time!
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