Yufuin weekend

We spent last weekend in and near the town of Yufuin, in Oita prefecture. At a higher elevation, the leaves had mostly already changed, but not all of them, and it was much colder than Tachiarai.

We travelled in style, and took the train for 1 1/2 hours to the town of Yufuin.

This is the view from the station, and we arrived with about 2-3 hours to kill until a big bus came and picked us up at the station. We wandered and had a nice lunch. When the bus arrived, there were some other ladies on the bus, and it drove us over an hour up through a mountain pass, and down into another valley - it was really beautiful.

The valley was all low hills and meadows, surrounded on all sides by mountains. The above photo is looking back towards the mountain range we went over to get into the valley.

All the leaves had mostly all changed at that altitude, so it was at that stage just before winter, when everything's kinda brown and gray. The mountaintops even had light sprinklings of snow on them, and we got some flurries in the late afternoon.

The sun peeked through the clouds and shone rays of sunlight onto the valley here and there, but wow, it was cold. Must've been in the 20's at least, I'm just guessing, and with wind.

The place we stayed was pretty nice. Nothing too fancy - sort of a cabin-like motel feel, nothing really Japanese, except that there were hot springs.. mostly just hot water pumped into baths that you can reserve for an hour at a time. The night included dinner and breakfast, which were delicious.

Dinner
For dinner, we had lots and lots of different stuff, served seperately, one after the other. We started with a daikon salad, a small crab-cake thing, some beef shabu-shabu on our own private little burners, and a salty custard thing that Will says had chicken and squid in it, but I didn't get past the first 2 bites. Let's see.... then we had a small square of some sort of bread-beef-mix, cooked, very good, with a thin slice of duck on top, with a circle of hot mustard, which was delicious. Everything was close to bite-size. We also had a small piece of smoked fish wrapped inside cooked, hardened leaves, miso soup, a small bowl of soft tofu, rice... I must be missing something. Anyway, it was really delicious, and we had a small carafe of hot sake at the end to top it all off! "Sumimasen, sake no atsui o ippon kudasai!!" :) (Excuse me, a bottle of hot sake, please!)

Then it was off to our private onsen, which had an inside and outside place to relax in the hot water. How it works is, you take everything off in the small changing room, which has a bench, a sink, etc. Then you go into the tiled onsen room, which has an area with shower heads and faucets and 2 small buckets, plus soap and shampoo, which you use to rinse off before you get into the onsen. Then, it's into the hot water, and you're on your way to relaxation. We sat outside for an hour, staring out at the dark valley below. It was fantastic!

Also, our room had a fancy "kotatsu", which is a coffee-like table that has a blanket draped around all sides (tucked under the table top), and this one had a hole in the floor and a big heater underneath that you could put your feet on. We were nice and toasty!

Breakfast
We had breakfast the next morning before our second round of onsen:
Salad, honey-crusted "mountain potato" wedges, sausage, funky scrambled eggs, raisin bread-pastry, yogurt with strawberry sauce, miso soup, rice, and a raw egg (Will had that one, after I .... egged him on... Heehee!)


Then later that day we got back to Yufuin, and with 3 hours to kill, we found a small street lined with little touristy-shops, and packed full of... yes, tourists. Japanese tourists though. We haven't seen more than 10 European tourists yet! It was nice though, although it was really cold, and we wandered around until the warm train came and swooshed us back to Kurume.

The small neighborhood, and in fact the whole town of Yufuin, is presided over by the huge mountain, Yufe-dake.

The volcanic activity in the area is pretty obvious when you see these little natural hot-water thingys everywhere. Mmmmm... hot water.

(Close-up view, with a little jizo statue in the background. It could be a Buddha too, I'm not sure.)

Oh ruler of the town.

Us walking down into the throngs of chilly shoppers...

Oh look! Another hot water tap!

This was a wall along one of the side streets of the small neighborhood. Nice, huh?

A cluttered shop.

"Omiyage" (gifts) for all those friends and co-workers back home.

This is a typical yakitori stand I just thought you might like to see. Ah, street food is always the best!

Some pots for sale.

Yes, that's 'Europpian' Crepes... sugar pizzas!

And low and behold, let us all pray to the one and only, the infamous, all-mighty.....
HELLO KITTY!!!
Is this not consumer-mania at it's finest??

But WAIT!!!....

It's her rival!!!! Slot-machine kitty!!!! Oh, the evil-ness.

Ah, that's better. Don't we all feel much better now?

Hey! It's a REAL kitty!!! They are rarely friendly on the streets here (Sara - not like Greece!), and so Will got to pet it.. aw!

And... then he was told politely to stop. Might as well go back to worshipping Hello Kitty.

And, the last photo of the day is one of some interesting drain pipes on a house.
"Catchy", huh?! :)

Love you all!!