Hello from Kyushu! Japan is now in Golden Week.
Starting with Showa Day on Thursday April 29, the Golden Week where public holidays occur one after another making it a long, long weekend continues until the following Wednesday where public holidays of Constiution Day (May 3), Green Day (May 4) and Children’s Day (May 5) are grouped together. For some people like us, taking Thursday and Friday off make it a 11 day holiday using only 3 days of annual leaves.
We decided to road trip around the northern part of Kyushu.
For this week’s post, I’ll share our first 2 days of our trip so far but firstly, a little bit about Kyushu.
About Kyushu
九州 (Kyushu) is the southern island region of Japan below the mainland, Honshu. Although Kyushu means 9 states/prefectures, there are only 7 prefectures:
- 大分 (Oita)
- 熊本 (Kumamoto)
- 宮崎 (Miyazaki)
- 福岡 (Fukuoka)
- 佐賀 (Saga)
- 長崎 (Nagasaki)
- 鹿児島 (Kagoshima)
Until the early Meiji area (early 20th century), Japan was organised differently from the current 47 prefectures and Kyushu consisted of 9 kingdoms.
My dad is from Kagoshima so I have visited Kagoshima especially during summer vacations and I visited Miyazaki once with my Aunty. However, I’ve never visited other prefectures and it was the first visit to Kyushu for my husband.
Our first stop was to Oita.
About Oita
- Kyushu is rich in onsen (1/3 of onsen in Japan are in Kyushu!) but it is Oita that takes the title of the onsen (hot spring) prefecture of Japan with the most amount of hot spring produced – over 87,000 kiloliters of onsen water from 2,700 different sources every day.
- There are 8 unique onsen sources in the onsen town, 別府 (Beppu) in Oita. The source is called 地獄 (jigoku or hell) and you can have a tour of 7 hells in Beppu from blood red hot spring to dragon blue. There is an entrance price to visit each hell but there are a pass that makes it affordable to visit all 7. Many are in the Beppu city center but 血の池 (blood lake) and 龍 (dragon) are a bit far.
- The father of establishing Beppu as Japan’s #1 onsen town is Aburaya Kumahachi. An entrepreneur in the early 20th century who created impactful marketing campaign including starting a tour bus around the hell tour with pretty tour guides, climbing Mount Fuji to spread his slogan “Mountain is Mount Fuji, Ocean is Setonai, Onsen is Beppu” amongst others.
- Oita’s regional cuisine
- とり天 (Toriten or chicken tempura)
- 地獄プリン(Hell pudding or onsen steamed food including pudding)
- 冷麺 (reimen or cold noodle)
- かぼす(Kabosu, citrus)
Day 1: Going to Hell – easing into our trip in Beppu, Oita
We landed in Oita Airport at 11:00am and with our rental car, drove 45minutes in to the outskirts of Beppu for lunch.
地獄蒸し工房鉄輪 (Jigokumushi Kobo Kannawa, Hell steaming workshop Kannawa)
Cook your own meal in 100 degrees pure geo thermal onsen steam at Jigokumushi Kobo Kannawa.
There was a vending machine to purchase the type of food you want to steam + the basket. We selected 2 eggs, basket full of vegetables, prawn dumplings and chimaki (meat and rice wrapped in bamboo leaf). It is said that the salt in the onsen locks in the natural flavour of the food as it steams it and make it extra tasty.
We collected our food and headed to the steaming cooking station. I wore thick rubber gloves and placed our food on top of the wire net and dunked it into the steaming station.
The ladies set the timer and we collected our onsen steamed food when it was ready 15 minutes later.
I felt that I was able to taste the natural sweetness of the vegetables especially in cabbage and brussel sprouts.
We were offered chilli sauce, garlic sauce, soy sauce and ponzu sauce as condiments.
Nourishing and healthy lunch was the ideal introduction to the town known of onsen.
血の池(Chi no ike, bloody hell pond)
To digest our food before dipping into onsen, we headed to one of the 8 ‘hells’ – the bloody hell pond. This is (surprisingly) the only natural ‘hells’ and as the name may indicate, it is blood red.
This beautiful pink cherry flowers welcome you at the car park but the name is quite intimidating…?
The temperature is 78degrees so this isn’t an onsen to dip into but to watch the source of the onsen and buy some souvenirs.
The other hells can be bright blue, full of crocodiles, white and muddy.
別府温泉保養ランド (Beppu Onsen Hoyo Land)
You are spoilt for choice with onsen in Beppu, being the onsen town. For uniqueness, we selected to soak in Beppu Onsen Hoyo Land – a mud onsen.
For 1,100 yen per adult entry, you can detoxify in an outdoor mud bath (men and female combined), steam bath and Sulfur bath. The premise is quite old school and after rinsing (shampoo or body wash before the onsen isn’t allowed here) you soak in mudbath where scooping up the mud from the base gives you a mud mask.
It was slightly a nervous mixed gender experience as to head to one of the outdoor mudbath, you have to just walk on the path (instead of a path where you can hide yourself in the onsen and a covered path) but after an hour soak, I felt like my skin was a shade lighter and supple so it was worth a slight nervous walk.
Sweet refresh: Hell pudding from 岡本屋(Okamoto ya)
A few minutes drive from Hoyoland is the original store that started Beppu onsen steamed custard pudding, Okamotoya.
A mixture of Sulfur onsen steam smell and burnt caramel welcomes the guests where the puddings were steamed in front of the store.
We ordered to eat in and the creamy pudding was balanced well with bitter caramel. Could have easily had 3 or 4 more!
After checking in to our hotel up in the mountain side, we walked through a lush and green Beppu Park towards the port.
Our destination was the regional cuisine Toriten at the restaurant that started it all.
Dinner at 東洋軒 (Toyoken)
The chef who started Toyoken worked at many high end hotels in Osaka, Tokyo and cooked for Taisho era emperors. His Japanese take on Chinese fried chicken became Toriten – domestic chicken coated in eggs and fried.
Instead of the typical greasy and crispy Chinese fried chicken, toriten felt quite healthy as the soft and juicy chicken is coated in fluffy batter. We ordered original and yuzu flavoured toriten. Very tasty regional cuisine to start our trip!
Day 2 – Driving into the mountain
We woke up to a beautiful sunny Beppu from our hotel room. After soaking in our in-room onsen overlooking the town, we headed out for lunch.
A twist to the Korean cold noodle at 湖月(Kogetsu)
Beppu is famous for cold noodle and Kogetsu started it all where the original chef started serving a Japanese twist to the traditional Korean cold noodle.
I ordered the cold noodle in a normal serving (750 yen):
My husband ordered a warm spicy noodle in a large serving (1,000yen; they offer 2 more upgrades for a slightly additional fee):
The noodle was super long and chewy like no other Japanese noodle. It’s round noodle like spaghetti but was bouncy, dense and chewy (apparently they use buckwheat and their special ratio makes them chewy).
The broth was clear, cool with Japanese broth flavor instead of oily ramen soup maybe dried fish and seaweed like soba or udon soup.
Full and relaxed from morning long soak, we bid farewell to Beppu and headed towards the mountain, driving south.
湯布院 (Yufuin)
30-40 minutes drive away from Beppu was Yufuin that was recommended by one of my colleagues for their beautiful floral village. It was a quaint little tourist village with lots of food stores like croquette, soft serve ice cream.
Floral Village was a combination of all the cutesy characters in one little space including Peter Rabbit, Totoro, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Alice in Wonderland, Shaun the Sheep and more. I personally thought it was a bit too gimmicky but cute nonetheless.
We didn’t stay too long but continued on our journey south.
Early dinner with a view at Bebenko
The roads become more mountain side and expansive. As the area is famous for beef, we headed to べべんこ(Bebenko) for beef on rice and pork on rice (pork was also from the area) with this beautiful view, 888m high from sea level.
The property also had a lama, horses, a donkey and goats.
Dessert from a farm
Our dessert was from くじゅう やまなみ牧場 (Kuju Yamanashi Farm).
It was very much a show farm with sheep dog shows etc but we picked up a creamy soft serve for dessert and drinking yoghurt for breakfast.
Afternoon stroll at タデ原温原 (Tadewara wetlands)
For an easy walk to ease us into walking (for a big hike tomorrow), we headed to a boardwalk along the wetlands in Tadewara. There was a simple loop boardwalk track as well as nature walks from the same area to make it a full day walk or a quick boost of fresh air into your lungs.
Our accommodation tonight also has several private onsen so we relaxed in onsen after the walk. In the mountains it is quiet, much cooler at night and very peaceful.
So far, we have eaten many beautiful regional food from steam pudding and vegetables, fluffy toriten, cool and chewy noodle and beef on rice with a view. We have soaked in 3 types of onsen and looking forward to exploring more of Kyushu!
Hope you have a safe and good weekend.
Native Expat 
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