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

Rainy day

The museums were closed, so my normal rainy day activity was impossible.

My normal backup backup plan: just get wet and take lots of coffee breaks.

I used my railpass to go to the countryside.

First up was Nanzoin. Huge old place. Buses and buses of folks but still pretty calm.

After that I rode the wrong train, so that ate up some time.

Eventually I got to the town of Dazaifu. This place was hopping for a dreary day. I shudder to think about being here on a spring day. No sakura flowers, beautiful as they are, are worth that.

Cute little unmanned station
The bridge played a song when struck with a coin or something

One of hundreds of places to worship
Im a boar, lol
Remains of the faithful. Its very expensive to rest here.
Even though we’re at a Buddhist temple, they tuck Shinto shrines in here and there
The star of the show
I don’t know what any of this means
At the train station. The fighter is one of my favorites. He’s retired now
Here we are in Dazaifu. Where there’s a shrine, there’s a shopping street.
Neat old machine. Its been cranking out these bean treats by the hundreds for decades.

After all this, I was ready to sit and read for a couple of hour. I had fried meat and gravy for dinner. Delicious.

Nagasaki

Friends, I had a great day yesterday. I really slept well for the first time in weeks and awoke refreshed. So nice.

I got up kinda late but still managed to get a load of washing done before I left. So I’ll have clean drawers for a couple of days.

The limited express that took me to nagasaki. These older trains are still miles ahead of the amtrak stock in terms of comfort
The second bomb exploded over this spot in August of 1945.
There was, and are, a lot of Catholics in the prefecture. This is the remains of an important church nearby
I think the tour guide said that this sculpture was made from scrap metal after the explosion
A memorial to the Korean slaves that died because of the bomb. The official verbiage is forced laborers. But slaves, yeah
And another for the Chinese slaves. Also a lot of Korean and Chinese prisoners died.
Inside the hall of remembrance. In the stack at the rear are books with names written down of all the people that died directly and indirectly
Artists and calligraphers update the ledgers monthly
Very primitive air raid shelter
In the peace park
Remains of a hilltop prison very close to the hypocenter
At the museum
The guy said that the paper cranes are kept for quite a long time. I imagine they’re eventually burned in a ceremony of some kind
So, so many
After the museum, I did the other thing there is to do there; ride the cable car

All in all a very satisfactory day out