Beppu - boy

 In Tokyo we cancelled our day trips to see Mt Fuji due to cloudy weather so were happy when blue sky greeted our morning's departure and our train westbound afforded views of Fujisan almost veiled from head to toe in its own private cotton wool burqua. Maybe that's why a visit to Fuji is so alluring, because the clichéd but beautiful view of this snow-capped volcano is so elusive.

 

The Shinkansen took us effortlessly to the other side of Japan where we holed up for the night in Fukuoka. One grim looking large wooden Buddha and a wonderful conveyor-belt (kaiten) sushi experience later and we were in Beppu.

 

Japan is onsen (hot springs) country and Beppu has more than its fair share, so our first port of call was to an antiquated onsen to have a large amount of warm sand poured on top of us. The experience was rather like a large benevolent sand monster giving you an all encompassing warm hug, but not knowing when to stop or if it's squeezing the life out of you. First I felt at peace with only the sensation of blood pulsing heavily around my neck and legs; then I entertained thoughts of being buried alive because the sand felt too heavy and wondered if I needed help to stand up; the last five minutes I tried to will away an itchy nose. Maybe I need to be more 'zen' about this in future. When it was time, I stood up with ease, brushed the sand off and felt strangely and physically elated.

 

Our hotel, as many do in the area, had a private onsen so we'd wake up every morning with a piping hot sulphur bath. This set us up nicely for buying some supermarket sushi for lunch and seeing some of the many mediocre attractions that Beppu had to offer.

 

In an effort to make their 'devil' springs (those that where too hot to bathe in) more interesting they built parks around them, each with a different theme. One featured a hippo begging for food, another featured frequent crocodile fights. These are not the intended themes of course but surely the result of the conditions in each park. They had piranha too, but I guess putting all three in the same water would be a step too far.

 

The dichotomy of attitudes towards sex seems to reveal itself in Beppu too. A sex museum exists, as do coupons for money off, but you wouldn't know from looking in the tourist information office nor would you find it on any tourist maps, not even on the tourist map next the museum. Do they want people to go or not? Inside it's even weirder, not because of its content, though that is weird, but because the museum went to great pains to cover up the 'naughty bits' of vintage porn but nothing else. Baffling.