Hotel Orange 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 ...

... up. Anyone interested in classes should definately inquire beforehand. (Sala de Usuki open 9am-9pm 0972-64-7271)

There is a shopping road called Haccho Oji in this area too. There are a bunch of souvenier shops and places selling soft ice cream. I wanted to try the miso flavored soft ice cream but it was too cold out!

From the visitors center you walk up Nioza Historical Road. The old stone streets lined with beautiful white washed walls,beneath
heavily ...

... together and ended up all taking the stairs the last bit up, which, by this time, was not easy.

Finally at the top of the second highest point, Misen at 1974m, we all stopped for some much needed rest and food. Interestingly enough, right up on the top at 1974m, there was a temple, an inn and a restaurant. Very strange.

Despite the chains being ice cold, nearly vertical and quite high, you felt relatively secure, nestled in against the cliff, surrounded ...

... a amazing to see all the shrines all lit up at night and clambering out a cacophony of bells and drums all playing different notes at different times. Jess has really become somewhat of a celebrity amongst the young children in Hojo, everywhere we went little kids taking part in the festival were yelling "Jeshka sensei! Jeshka sensei!" It was really cute.

This was all quite exciting until later on that night when the drumming and bell ...

... 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!)

... and there is a massive parking lot overflowing with bikes. So, I decided I had to buy one and a couple of days ago I finally did! It's called "Tea Cup." It's a beautiful cream and brown beauty and I love her. So today I took a nice shot of her and road around snapping a few ( very few ) pictures of the neighborhood.

I plan to take more, but the thing is, when you are just a tourist somewhere it is a lot different than living there ...

... just shared one.

So the first part of the trip, we just journeyed peacefully around the river being either ruddered or poled in the shallow bits, by a older Japanese man wearing traditional Japanese clothing.

Quite a long while of this went on and we didn't realize, that this was the time we should be eating our Bento boxes...oops. So when someone finally decided to ask, he was pretty much "hurry up and eat!!!" Finally it was dark enough that the Cormorant ...

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.

... dealings with the western world. He also wrote the first Japanese-English dictionary. We went to the Manjiro museum on the cape and one of the most amazing things was a letter from President Roosevelt to an ancestor of Manjiro's saying that their two families went back a few generations and would always be friends. And the letter looked authentic too, not just a copy. Other than that it rained a lot and we had a good time just enjoying the scenery. One other cool thing that ...

... was very neat, a sleepy city and yet a proud city. They had their own kind of giant dragons that they made and danced with during their New Years festival that were very cool. You could see the wooden heads of various sizes in just about every shop. Uwajima is also fairly famous for their bullfighting. Yeah, that`s right, bullfighting. They have a bullfight arena right in the center of the city and the fights ...