Ahizuri Kokusai Hotel Tosashimizu

From Yufuin I took a bus over the mountains to Beppu and a new hostel there. An advantage of hostels is that there is usually someone who speaks English well enough to answer some questions, give info, etc. An exceptionally chatty Norwegian suggested we get some ramen, and we walked into a place straight out of Tampopo (a classic film).

The hostel also had internet use and I learned how to get out of the Japanese alphabet when I hit a key ...

... the streets made me wonder if I hadnt somehow been here before.

From the three story pagoda we found our way to the Nogami Yaeko Memorial Museum. (Open year-round 9:30am to 5pm. Entrance 300yen for adults. Info 0972-63-4803). This museum celebrates the literary artist Nogami Yaeko. Her family was in the shochu industry. Kyushu, particularly Oita, is known for its mugi shochu (Japanese whisky) and we were invited into the brewery as we eyed over free samples of ...

... the peak as it was, I couldn't really imagine doing the whole thing...all in one day at least.

The rope-way itself was quite an experience, as it ascends nearly vertically, from the still almost completely green and lush lowland valleys to vibrant, nearly fake looking fall colours at the top. The red, yellow and orange leaves splattered over a canopy of bright green pines was wonderful, never have I seen fall colours like that. Of course our companions from ...

... There was also a stand that sold the most amazing fried chicken ever!

Another interesting point ( though once again not conducive of sleeping ) was that one of these giant shrines was being built right below our balcony. It should be mentioned that they also drum constantly the entire time the shrine is at home in the makeshift garage they built for it.

Anyway, despite all the noise and lack of sleep it was a very enjoyable weekend.

... so that I can regularly update you with some photos and information!

I will try and backlog later, adding in Tokyo photos, and some other events.

For now, just a quick glimpse into life in Hojo!

(More photos to come....more of our apartment (after I finally bought some curtains), my school, etc!)

... when you are somewhere, where rules and manners are so important. So I often feel weird just snapping away. Especially at things like temples and shrines. I'm not even sure if you're allowed??? I'm going to try and find out though, because there are some beautiful Buddhist temples in Hojo, especially the one, it is just gorgeous.

I am also going to upload images for the journey here entry. So you can check that out if you want.

... we were a group of twelve we got our own boat!

We all met up in the afternoon at the Matsuyama JR ( JR stands for Japan Railways if you hadn't guessed ) Station and caught a train to Ozu, a really old city with many many historic buildings. We plan to return in the day sometime and explore the city a little better.

Once in Ozu, we had to walk, quite a long ways to the meeting place and then again to river where our boat was. We hopped on the boat and we were ...

... before we were in the air. Thank god for my trusty Nintendo DS and The Legend of Zelda.

The flight itself was uneventful, as is usually the case with my bad travel luck. I guess I should be thankful that my bad travel luck relates only to minor details such as missed planes, unstamped passports and fog and doesn't seem to effect important things like the engines.

Once in Kelowna, I spent the whole day with my brother who was leaving the next day to go ...

At some point through the flight, the entire in-flight entertainment system rebooted. Turns out its running on Linux. Pretty neat - yes I'm a geek - to see every screen on the plane with the little Linux penguin in the top left corner and the kernal boot messages scrolling up the screen.

... them. It turned out that a moderately famous Japanese chef was cooking that night in the hotel and was giving a private meal to these people, giving them samples of his dishes. The chef himself starting bringing us food out and seemed genuinely concerned about whether we were still hungry. His food was great and the cuisine itself was different than what we were used to having in Japan. And to top it all off they only charged us $6.00 apiece for the meal. People in Japan are so nice!