Beppuuuu 別府！

I'd always wanted to go to Beppu! I love hot springs~

And also the 'hell' thing has always attracted me...so I was super super excited to go there! ワクワクだった～

This is what Beppu station looks like:

This guy is called ピカピカノおじさん(pika pika ojisan) (shiny uncle).

Why shiny? because of his bald head!haha..

So who is Pika Pika Ojisan? His real name's くまはちあぶらやKumahachi Aburaya.

He'd a really amazing life from what I read off the plaque. Since young, he'd been known for being a hard worker.

When he was 30, he went to Osaka, made a lot of money from rice speculation and became known as "Aburaya general".

At 34, he lost all his money from speculation then took a ship (smelly and hot bottom of the ship) to America.

For about 3 years he travelled around, from Canada to Mexico. At 38 he returned to Japan. He was baptized in the US.

When he was 46 he moved to Beppu and started running a hotel. He took what marketing skills he learnt  in America to make Beppu famous. Basically he improved the tourism of Beppu a whole lot.

His catchphrase was: 山は富士山、海は瀬戸内、湯は別府。（If you're looking for a mountain, it should be Fuji mountain. For the sea, Seto Inland sea. For hot-spring, Beppu.

Anyway I gotta admit I admire him, to have lost everything and re-made himself. That's quite an accomplishment don't you think?

Yohio

I don't know about you...but I find this pretty weird!!

Not saying he's a bad performer or anything...just that..it's strange!haha

What do you think about Yohio??

Oita 大分

We went to Oita by car!

Our first stop was Kyushu Natural Zoological Park ( 九州自然動物公園). African Safari! (アフリカンサファリ!)

Yes I kinda thought it was weird to have an African Safari in the middle of Kyushu hhahaha even more so because I didn't get any warning that we were going to one LOL

Check out the animals we saw!

Like a boss!!! He didn't move at all hahahaha...

You can also go on their buses if you don't want to drive! That way, you can feed some of the animals and see them up-close!

ROAR!

Shaggy bisons

The elephants were really popular. We had to line up and wait to see them!

Sleeping tiger no crouching dragon..

The cheetahs were really cute! All of them look in the same direction..if one turns they all turn..

Llama reminds me of hunchback of Notre Dame

I know I'm a sexy beast..

It was quite a fun experience..Only thing was we had to rent a dvd player that would play info about the animals..and it kept telling us to put on our seat belts and not get out of the car which was a little annoying..

We saw squirrel monkeys (リスざる）! And we could feed them...Do you know what they like to eat?

Why is chibu's face like that?

They eat worms!!I couldn't get myself to touch the worms so I didn't feed them haha..

The monkeys are kinda cute though..(just the 1 on the right)

Aren't the ponies cute? Chibu...stop touching that pony's ass...

 I was really excited that there was a kapybara at the zoo! カピバラいた！

 That's one mighty strange looking kapybara...

There was a dog saloon and cat saloon too but we didn't enter because there's a separate fee! It was quite fun..

I don't think my kapybara looks like the real one...

門司港（Mojiko)

When I was in Kokura, we went to Mojiko!

It's a little harbor and because I guess a lot of foreignors used to come, some of the architecture and designs of buildings reflect that.

This is the old train station (JR門司港駅）:

Isn't it all cute and old and retro??

Water feature in front of the station must be fun for the kids in summer :)

Even the inside of the station's all retro~


We also went to Mojiko Retro Observation Tower (門司港レトロ展望室）which is just behind a library symbolizing the friendship ties between Dalian in China with Kita Kyushu. The library is called 国際友好記念図書館 (Kokusai Yuko Kinen Toshokan).

This is the view from the top of the tower, I think the ticket was 300yen.

We saw banana men!

Guessing they're some famous comedians..



And we passed Moji Mitsui Club （旧門司三井倶楽部) - Einstein and his wife stayed here before. Now, it's a restaurant, event hall and memorial.

There are lots of places to visit and see in Mojiko! Tons more we haven't explored. To find out more click here. Really good site! More info in Japanese than English.


Of course we also went around window shopping!Found a shop where we could sample fish and fugu (pufferfish)!

These are actually real (dead of course) pufferfish! Isn't the big one huge? Even bigger than our faces. The tiny one inside's a real one too.

Also discovered this cute shop called hacomo - they use old boxes to cut out shapes that you can use to make different shapes! The armor you see below was for Children's Day (boy's day actually).

Saw the same shop in Yufuin, which I will blog about later:

I also ate this awesome thing on a stick which was ebi (shrimp) wrapped in deep fried toast (食ってんかのえびパン）! Ohmygosh it tasted so good! おいしかった！...I highly recommend it! It wasn't really near the shops, it was near the bridge near the observation tower.

Up early on Sunday

Today's Mother's Day.

How are you celebrating it?

I got up super early, went to Cittarama, came home and went to sleep. That's how my day has been so far.

The Venerable Veradhammo was there and I like listening to him.

A picture I took of him at Wat Ratanawan

1st of all, he speaks English.

2ndly, he puts things in a simple way, that anyone could understand and apply.

The Dhamma reflection today was very short but I came away with this:

There are 2 ways to deal with past kharma.

1. Passive - it's done and accumulated in the past, I can't do anything.

2. Sun Bharmi (I'm probably not spelling this right at all) - Use the bad situations that turn up because of your bad kharma to develop a stronger character, to find refuge in your heart.

Such a simple thing, but so hard to put into practice! And how come I never thought of that? Maybe I need more time to reflect on things instead of always rushing around all the time..


I remember a talk of his I heard a long time ago that I really like..

He said he had a fear of speaking in public. Then he realized what he really feared was failing.

Isn't that true of a lot of things? Fear of heights is really a fear of falling.

Fear of dogs is a fear of getting bitten.

Fear of exams is a fear of failing exams.

What do you really fear?