afraid of small animals

Shima Road Party

I look kind of scary, but hey, whatever--I just finished my first 10k race!  And it only took an hour and eight minutes.

Where's the butter?

I was recently forced to give in to the evils of margarine, which I swore would never happen!  I am a butter girl through and through, and I honestly think that the natural fat in butter (yum) is way better than that processed stuff in spreads, even if they are low fat.  But much to my absolute SHOCK, there is a butter shortage in Japan so I gave in and bought this.  It is margarine with butter inside, but the taste still leaves a lot to be desired.  The most disturbing part is that in Japanese, it is called ファット・スプレッド, or "fat spread."  Gross!

I'm giving serious thought to trying to make my own butter, I'm just not sure I have the arm strength. 

More Kyushu Camping and the Onsen Circuit

We saw a ton of signs for this animal theme park and it really made me think of my brother!

After Aso, we headed to Kurokawa Onsen, a small hot spring town with a bunch of quaint hotels and gorgeous outdoor baths.  We got our three-entry medallions and were ready to enjoy it!

Here's a picture of Okunoyu, probably one of the nicer outdoor baths that I had ever seen.  It was right on a river and you can even see a little waterfall off in the distance there.  It was so nice!  But the only drawback was that the best bath (above) was mixed so we only snuck in for a little bit when there were no men.

After spending the night near Kurokawa we headed for Beppu, where we had this campsite essentially to ourselves.  There were some crazy swans on the lake though, and when they got out of the water and started walking around, they were HUGE.  Luckily they never came knocking at our tent that night or I would have seriously freaked out.

We were just a few days too early for the Beppu Onsen festival, but I still enjoyed the posters and we still checked out a few more hot springs. 

Nice place to warm your toes on a rainy day!

We went around Beppu that day, checking out some steaming pools of different colored water, or the hells.   

That night, we decided to pick up the tent and head for the big city so that we didn't have to bear another night in the freezing cold, wet tent.  We were all the happiest we had been during the whole trip, that's for sure!

Roadtrip to Kyushu!

Spring break this year we drove to Kyushu to do a tour of the major sites we could see there and camp for a week.  The drive there was long and tiring, leaving around 2 am and getting there around 2 in the afternoon. 

When we arrived we went straight to Kagoshima, the furthest spot in our Kyushu trip, and got right down to business at the hot sand onsen in Ibusuki.  Getting buried in hot sand for 10 minutes was a great way to recover after being crammed in the car for so long.  But I didn't get quite big enough for my booty and after being squashed into hot sand my rear came out a bit toasted. 

We took in the sights of southern Kyushu on the scenic drive back to Kagoshima where we ate and promptly fell into our beds at a hotel for the night.

The next day we went to Sakurajima, the gigantic volcano that looms over the city of Kagoshima from across the bay.  It was pouring rain and foggy though, so no good pictures of the volcano itself.  All I wanted to see was the famous onsen/shrine located on the island.  Because it's a shrine, you have to enter the bath in a white robe.  There is also a gigantic tree growing out of the onsen and a nice seaside view.  Even though the weather was bad, it was nice to soak in the hot bath.  It wasn't the only volcano on our trip so it wasn't too disappointing.

The next day we went hiking around Mt. Aso, another active volcano in central Kyushu, and the biggest volcanic caldera in the world, I believe.  There are a lot of smaller peaks around the main volcano, so we went out for a hike around some volcanic craters.  The hike started off like this, and I thought I was in for a treat!

The hike got more strenuous the higher we got, and I was a little scared to see that we didn't get a paved walkway the whole time. 

We did have a nice view of Mt. Aso as we hiked, so even though I fretted about getting back, it was a nice day.  We had a good trailblazer, after all.

Here we are at the peak of the volcano.  Disappointingly, no volcanic lava to be seen, but the gases coming out of here really stunk and made it a much more authentic experience than the "volcano" that Kevin and I saw in Hokkaido.

After our first night of camping and our long hike, we were keen to find a good onsen.  This old place was recommended to us by a local and while it a hi-tech onsen, it had a nice, authentic feeling to it.  I particularly liked the lanterns hanging outside.