Beppu

 The view from my (train) window this morning 

We sent our luggage on ahead today & caught the Shinkansen (bullet train), headed for Beppu, because that’s really a must do activity in Japan … right?! Ken got us to the station and nearly got us on  the right train. Close Ken but no cigar, if not for the astute people in the tour group who were reading plarform guides and pointed us in the right direction we would have ended up at Tokyo today. 

Here is Campbell, 

a very nice young man in our group. He’s on box duty today. Ken, and various ‘helpers’ have been carrying these boxes around for the whole trip. They are the boxes the audio devices came. He’s actually given up using his, so now he just shouts at us, but we carry these boxes so that he can return the devices at the end of the trip. One wonders if there is no other way of obtaining boxes in Japan?

Lunch was at a service station, but they don’t do service stations over here like we do. I mean look at this view of Beppu for a start.

And how about this food … at a truck stop!

Down in Beppu we went to a very interesting museum, Japanese do these interactive places really well. The middle room was a labyrinth with stamp-stations to locate and decorate a postcard (going out to my grandies) which was right up my ally. I really enjoyed this whole activity.

Beppu is a place built up around hot springs. The Hells of Beppu are a series of pools amidst pretty gardens, well worth the walk around. 

Finally arriving at our hotel, via a circuitous route, Ken unsure where he was going again, and we were all sure we were in the wrong place because very posh, and not unknown for Ken to say ‘ummm no not here’  but it turned out this was where we are staying for the next couple of days and we are extremely happy about that.