Fukuoka Trip: Day 2 - Castles & Onsens

...the next day we woke up early in the morning, determined to stay on Masa's well planned schedule. After about an hour of driving on some wide open roads, we reached a ferry port that took us across the water back to the center of Kyushu (Hiroshima is isolated on a peninsula). Both of us were a little tired from lack of sleep and we ended up taking a small nap inside the comfy cabin area above the car hold.

view from the outside deck of the ferry

We both woke up with about 10 minutes until reaching the destination and they were running a news special on a top story in Japan surrounding the murder of 2 civil servants. I'll never forget it because it was such an odd case. The killer was a man in his mid 40s and he had already admitted to killing the government officials. His motive for doing so was bizarre, claiming that when he was a boy, his pet dog was accidentally killed by a government program which rounded up and put down stray dogs and cats. Apparently the experience haunted him and he eventually snapped.

Anyway, back to my trip, after landing we drove a little bit longer until we reached Kumamoto Castle. Considered one of the most beautiful castles of Japan (Osaka Castle is another), the place was full of tour groups dominated mostly by Koreans. Kyushu is the closest to Korea out of all of Japan's major islands and there was a noticeable influence of their immigrants and tourists.

outside the Keep

Ninja posing for me
View from the top

The interior of the castle was turned into a museum full of artifacts of the inhabitants and history of what took place there. We looked around for about an hour and then eventually jumped back in the car to drive to our next destination.

Next, we set our sights on Mt. Aso - the largest active volcano in Japan. Its different from the more traditional volcanoes because Mt. Aso is a caldera volcano which are marked by large cauldron like craters in the center. The amazing thing was that the lava was a light green color and there was a strong sulfur smell in the air.

Mt. Aso

After that we drove into the Oita prefecture to visit the traditional onsens in the area. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any pictures at the place, but we went to a beautiful traditional little village which was bordered by farmland and full of hot spring inns (there were over 10 hot springs!). We decided to buy a 3-inn pass which allowed us access to pick 3 hot springs of our choice and enjoy them as long as desired. Although the little town was crowded with tourists for the long weekend, we had the hot springs all to ourselves during our time there. It felt really great at the time and I remember in the following week I had so much energy (which I attribute to the hot spring minerals).

Finally, we ended our second day together by traveling a little further north to reach our ryokan (traditional Japanese inn).

nearby ryokan signs

Masa had made a reservation which included a full dinner and breakfast the next morning, as well as access to the tiny hot spring establishments nearby. The inn was run by a local Japanese family and they were really excited to have a foreigner staying there. They really treated me well and I was able to use some of my Japanese to speak with them.

dinner is served

For dinner we got a sampler of many different traditional Japanese foods along with some local favorites. There was fish variations, tofu, miso soup, flan custard and much more, and most of it was delicious. One of the local specialties served was some raw horse meat! At first glance it looked like raw beef but I could tell it was slightly different. Masa assured me that it was tasty, so I hesitantly decided to try some.

raw horse meat
ready to try it!

tasty!

He ended up being right and I enjoyed eating it. After dinner we went outside to inn to try the nearby hot springs. Once again it felt awesome and they had a really interesting steam room/hot spring hybrid which was my favorite.

on our way outside to the onsens

We ended the night by watching the movie Predator. It was funny to hear it dubbed in Japanese and the deep voice of the actor speaking for Arnold Schwarzenegger. I had never seen it before so Masa did some translating for me, luckily for us most of the movie is action scenes and fighting. And with that, we called it a day....

our bedroom