Japan Adventures: Road Trippin'

Finally, after all these months, I’m so excited to continue my Japanese blogging from our honeymoon! In our last blog post, we explored Fukuoka and journeyed to the Pokemon fossil museum on my birthday. The next leg of our journey was about to begin - by renting a car!

Road Trip

Friday, May 17

Road trip day! We forwarded our big luggage to a future hotel and dragged our smaller suitcases to the Toyota car rental, where we picked up a white Toyota Yaris.

I was VERY nervous about getting the car onto the road! It was a busy 4-lane street in Fukuoka with pedestrians and bicyclists, and I had to remember to drive on the left side! Everything was reversed – including the turn signal switch and windshield wipers!

But Miss_Editor picked this rental place because it was on the edge of the city, so we just had to take the ramp onto the highway a few streets down. Simple enough! Well, I missed the turn, didn't realize the parking brake was on, accidentally turned on the windshield wipers a few times – it was a bit chaotic! But we slowly made it back to the highway on ramp, and this time I got on with minimal fuss. The highway speed was just 60km/h, so super reasonable for getting my sea legs under me! Soon enough, I was driving like a natural – including going 20k above the speed limit like everyone else!

Our first stop was Futami Gora, a tori gate on the beach! Miss_Editor had finally found a phone Sim card, so unlike the day before, this attempt at livestreaming went super well!

We had a great time showing chat the beach and the gate, and then walking over to get lunch at Surf Side Cafe, an American diner where we got a watermelon ice cream float, jelly soda, and fish and chips!

We hopped back in the car and continued streaming for awhile, and it was just a blast and totally energizing. We eventually ended stream and drove the rest of the way to a plum wine brewery/souvenir shop, where we got all kinds of artisanal local foods, including an Attack on Titan plum wine since the mangaka is from Oita prefecture!

Miss_Editor had initially planned a couple more stops along the way, but between some road closures and not wanting to miss dinner, we decided to just drive the rest of the way to Beppu. But that was a sight unto itself; driving through valleys and over lush, deep green forested mountains before getting to see the city on the water. 

We had booked an onsen spa hotel for the night, and arrived around 5:30 – with time to spare. Terrace Midoubaru was up the mountain, so had an amazing view of the city and the bay.

We got to choose our own yukata, and then went to our 9-course kaiseki meal!

Everything was local and beyond delicious, and while the portions were small, we were so full by the end!

We went back to our room to charge a few electronics and relax, and then went to the lobby for cocktail hour. We were 10 guests total, and there were pairs of seats to sit in and enjoy the beautiful view. Since we were the last to arrive, we got the only free seats – right in the very front, with all Japanese tourists behind us! We ordered a glowing parfait and mango cocktail, and both will be hard to beat!

Afterwards, we got to enjoy our in-room onsen! It was a huge beautiful wooden tub with fresh, hot spring water, and the same beautiful view. (But we kept the windows closed because there were some big bugs trying to get in!) We went to bed early in our fluffy futon beds, and had a great night's sleep, with full bellies and relaxed bodies!

Saturday, May 18

I insisted we don our yukata one last time, and headed down for breakfast! We had the silkiest tofu in a kind of broth, which you dipped in homemade soy sauce (if it didn't totally fall apart!) along with a beautiful bento of many different, delicious local foods. We were totally full by the end!

We packed our bags and hopped back in the Yaris, whom we had nicknamed Umeshu-san after the plum liquor the area was famous for. We drove to the Beppu Ropeway, which was a cable car that took us all the way up Mount Tsurumi, which is a 1,374.5 m (4,510 ft) volcano!

The view was absolutely stunning, and at the top of the mountain was a shrine and some hiking to get to the very peak. It was maybe 10-15 minutes of walking up stairs, but the summit was totally worth the sweat! 

On the return to the cable car back down, I tried a pomelo zabon candy, which was very bitter and one of the few foods I really didn't like! But our next road trip stop was the town of Beppu and its Hells.

Beppu is known for its natural hot springs, the most famous of which are the Seven Hells – hot springs that each have a unique appearance and colour. We got a bit turned around while looking for parking near the Hells, and inadvertently made our first stop not at a hell, but at a restaurant that had been on our radar where you steam your own food using the heat from a hot spring! The line was long, so we took a number and used our hour-long wait to visit some hot springs!

Of course there was a stamp rally here, so we got booklets and a ticket to visit all seven hells if we wished, and we started at the White Hell! The spring here was a pale green-white, and not translucent at all. It had a small aquarium, which is heated by the hot spring! This stamp had a fishy on it.

The White Hell

Second, we visited the Crocodile Hell, where we saw enclosures of dozens of crocs relaxing and soaking up the sun, which is why this stamp had a crocodile!

The Crocodile Hell

Lastly, we visited Cooking Pot Hell, where you could apparently get food like eggs cooked there. There was a ton of statues and other imagery featuring oni, or demons!

We didn’t have time for any more Hells, because it was close to food time! We had selected our meal when we first made our reservation, so we gathered up our assorted foods and brought it to a huge oven-type thing that was built over a hot spring. We struggled a bit to understand how it all worked, but the employees directed Miss_Editor to put on thick rubber gloves and arm covers, remove a wooden lid, and lower our food into one of the half-dozen steamers. She put the lid back on, and we were given a timer so we’d know when to return and retrieve our food!

We had snow crab, yaseuma (wheat noodles that you dip in delicious ground roasted soya beans), veggies, eggs, and filled buns. It was all incredibly hot, and quite good – the yaseuma, corn on the cob, and buns were definitely my favourite!

Then we hopped back in the car for an hour, and made our last pit stop of the road trip in Kitsuki, a historic town with two samurai districts and a castle, that had kept some of its Edo-period aesthetic.

It was near the end of the day and strangely quiet, but we hustled to get to the beautiful castle museum before it closed for the day.

It was a beautiful walk through the grounds, including a gorgeous shrine. The museum in the castle was simple, but seeing all the old armour and weapons was very cool.

The view of the town and the water was just stunning. The grounds were gorgeous, and well-kept by the small team of older folks we saw working there.

We walked along an elevated street on a hill where famous samurai houses once resided, and enjoyed the view down a staircase to the main street.

It was quite a drive from here to our final destination of Kitakyushu, and we decided to stream it to keep our energy up as we drove through the beautiful mountains. For over an hour, we thought we were streaming, and we were…while the Intro screen played! We felt so silly, but for the 20 minutes we were actually streaming our faces, we had a great time! We topped the car on gas, dropped it off at the rental place, paid tolls for all the highways we’d driven, and caught the Shinkansen to Hiroshima!

Thanks so much for your patience with these! It’s a lot of effort to put them together, but it’s been a real joy getting to revisit such a special trip, and I love getting to share it with y’all! We will have Hiroshima, Tottori, Osaka, Tokyo and Sendai to explore, so I hope we’ll see you there!