Shabu-Shabu and the Hot Springs
Yasuko’s old school friend Kimi and her husband took us out for Shabu-Shabu at a local restaurant just around the corner from the family home, which was very impressive. Typical of older style Japanese restaurants, it was quite plain on the outside but very ornate and comfortable on the inside, and the food was superb. (See photos).
We warmed up for the trip to the Beppu hot springs by going to the local hot spring at Nango with Yasuko’s friend Kimi. The drive up through the hills was very pleasant, passing through country villages with lots of orange persimmons on the trees, and the trees starting to change colour for autumn. We all felt better after the hot spring bath and cooled off with some beer and soba (buckwheat noodles).
There are lots of restaurants, bars and other entertainment around the old family district and we said goodbye to the family with a round-table Chinese dinner where they all promised to come and visit us in Australia soon and we promised to come back to Nobeoka again before too long.
Beppu is a traditional hot spring resort town and we stayed in a traditional Japanese Ryokan (Inn) with tatami mat floors and slept on futons which the staff lay out for you each night. It’s only 2 hours by train, again through some pretty countryside, and the in-house hot spring bath was ready upon arrival. The rooftop bath-house has a number of pools at different temperatures including an outdoor bath with ocean views.
Next day for a change we went to Yufuin, a small resort town a little further into the countryside, where we hired a private bath-house rather than go to the public baths. Then back to our Inn and enough time to get into the big baths again before dinner.
After so many baths, if “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” – then we should be feeling Divinity coming over us soon – especially with (most of) the hotel toilets having bidet facilities including seat warmers. Not to be outdone we had a final hotspring bath in the morning before leaving for Yokohama. On the train our seat was equipped with a power outlet for running the laptop, so we were able to catch up with our journal enroute.
