Hoetl Nangoku 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 ...

An incredible day trip from Oita City to Usuki City took me back in time. Usuki swells with the ancient essence of Japan, reminding me of the reasons why I fell in love with Japan so many years ago.

This trip is definately recommended for anyone visiting Beppu or Oita, as it can be done easily from either city, and is affordable!

Access:
From Oita Station or Beppu station take the JR Nippon Honsen Line south to Usuki Station.
720yen (about 8 dollars) from ...

... 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 ...

This weekend saw quite an impressive ( though sometimes annoying ) Autumn Festival here in Hojo.

The festival basically consists of many many Hojo residence, getting together and building these strange portable shrines and carrying them around town banging on bells and drums as loud as they can all day and all night, dressed in traditional Japanese clothing and getting really really drunk. All culminating in a spectacular event of throwing ...

... 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.

... attract the fish...which I'm pretty sure is illegal in Canada??? Anyway, the lights and burning lantern thing attract the fish and the Cormorants catch them. When one of them is full ( apparently they can hold up to 16 fish ) the fisherman reals one of them in and sort of chokes them until they cough up the fish.

The boat got us quite close and I got a pretty nice video, which I will try to upload. It was a pretty amazing experience, even if questionably a little cruel.

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.

... to our little tent for the evening. One thing I should say about japanese campgrounds: they have little crabs EVERYWHERE! If you get out of your tent in the middle of the night you can hear tons of them scatter and even if you don't you can hear them while you're sleeping scuffling around outside. After a few days of riding we came to the crossroads where the cape breaks away from the mainland. There were two roads and one of them led to some towns that weren't on my map and ...

... are kind of like a bovine sumo where one bull has to knock the other bull either out of the ring or onto his knees. We didn`t see a bullfight ourselves but everywhere we looked we saw either pictures of the bullfights or there were painted tiles on the sidewalk depicting a bullfight or you could buy large wooden figurines of bulls in full ceremonial regalia, which they dress them in before every fight. Uwajima also ...