Travel day

Had a decent breakfast at a chain restaurant. Kind of like a Dennys. Fish, soup, and rice. These guys eat natto in the morning too, but no thank you.

The flight was short but I’ll take the train next time. Its more civilized somehow.

Kanazawa is bigger and more urban than id expected. Ill find the charming parts of the city today.

My only activity was the local gardens. Lots of folks taking pictures because it is beautiful.

My hostel is interesting. It’s upstairs of this guy’s house, and he’s not much of a housekeeper. The sheets are clean, and the water is hot, though. I slept ok, and that’s all I really care about.

When the leaves start getting really red, this place will become a free-for-all.
Hahahahaha no

Last Fukuoka day

My railpass expired (and I needed to get some exercise in anyway) so I was on foot yesterday.

I had a lovely walk to the bougie shopping area and got a coffee. A production team was shooting a commercial, so I watched that for a while. So much hurry up and wait lol.

The local art museum had some really great stuff. I saw some modern art too, which I love.

After lunch, I went down to the sumo stadium fan zone. I was trying to manifest a ticket, but that was a bust. Watching the wrestlers arrive is hilarious. They get a small round of very polite clapping as they walk by.

For some reason, watching a minivan roll up and barf out a giant man is pure entertainment.

After a sit down, i went to see the last temple on my list. Very peaceful.

Im fixing to move on to Kanazawa on Friday.  Kyushu has been fun but im ready for something else.

Anish Kapoor. He’s famous for his use of pigments
Its actually hollow
This was an American fighter I guess
Each upper division fighter has two assistants. The minivans aren’t big enough for all of them, so the assistants arrive early and just sit here. Poor guys lol
You can pay a lot of money to have your remains placed here
The first lords of fukuoka are buried here
Its bigger than it looks here
Fukuoka’s manhole cover
In the old town
Very famous brass frog of hakata station
Haha a Christmas market
No mulled wine was consumed

Beppu

This was the last day of my rail pass, and I squeezed the heck out of it. I got an early train for the mountains and enjoyed the morning reading and looking out the window.

In beppu there isn’t much to do but relax and see some tourist stuff. Apparently, there’s some kind of animal park.

I have questions

The main attraction is the “hells of beppu.”

Instead of onsen hotels, they took the hot water and created this string of hot water pools. It’s super touristy, but why not?

The shtick here is that you eat the eggs and steamed pork buns cooked with geothermal heat
An egg-cooking basket
Looks neat but I suspect that the effect of the steam is a bit contrived
The gardens are beautiful, and the flowers bloom out of season because of warm water
It tastes like an egg
Some kind of clay, I guess
The water tasted salty
Don’t mind if I do!
Bacteria makes the red color?
As you go down the hill, the steam pools get crappier and more tourist attraction-y.

I skipped the last 2. Instead, I walked around the little town, and it’s pretty charming.

Apparatus for capturing the heat?
There’s many free public footbaths
You can get a nice steaming just walking down the street lol

After a coffee i headed back to town.

Nice day, but 5.5 hours on the train was too much.

Mojiko

After a small mishap where I shamelessly broke the law by stealing train services, I had a very nice latte and watched the birds fight over stale bread.

Kitakyushu is a largeish port city near fukuoka that has a museum I’ve been wanting to see for years. The TOTO museum isn’t a toilet museum, not exactly. But this is the first thing you see, so….

The company spent years developing the bidet part of the toilet. In the meantime, toto made dishes. This beautiful set was made for the emperor’s household
Yes it runs on “animal waste”
This museum even had some art
The squatty potty used to be made of wood. Nasty.
I would love to have this right now.
That’s 700,000 yen for just the toilet. TOTO sells prefab bathrooms, and they are beautiful
Im pretty sure it was beef, but exactly what part of the animal it was im not exactly sure. Still, very tasty.
At the waterfront
At the railway history museum.
Mojiko train station. Most of the existing buildings are western because of the trade activity.
Historically, this is the port where bananas were imported from Taiwan. There’s decent tasting banana ice cream, too
On my way home from the station, sumiyoshi shrine
Some kind of practice or ceremonial dohyo. Later a dude with a sumo wrestler hairdo was tarping it. Im sure there was a ceremony related to the tournament going on right now