Beppu food and onsen

Do you know what food is famous in Beppu?

団子汁！（Dango jiru - dumpling soup)

We found a recommended restaurant in a magazine called 信濃屋（Shinnouya)　so we headed over there. It's quite near Beppu station, just a bout a 10 minute walk away.

 It is such a cute and quaint place!! The ladies who work there are really cute too.

The dango jiru was soooooooooooo nice!! I'm salivating now just thinking about it. Soft dumpling skin in a flavorful soup with hints of citrus....YUM.

And you can pretend to be dainty and drink tea with dainty tea cups hahaha...or coffee (which my friends said was delicious)

The banana milk zenzai (バナナミルクぜんざい）was also super yum! First time seeing a banana milk zenzai so I ordered it. Slices of banana with I think it was vanilla ice cream and red beans boiled to just the right texture in cold banana milk.

I totally recommend you go to this place.

We saw a Tengu while walking around.

 The guest house we stayed at recommended this Onsen, 竹瓦温泉（Takegawara Onsen)

It's really old and the bath is nothing great to shout about. Really simple but the water's really nice and warm. Very traditional. Separated baths of course. The windows are quite near the street though so if they're open people can actually peek in hahaha..

The sand baths (砂湯） are awesome! Best time is to go early in the morning and get a ticket. They only let a certain number of people in at a time. You go in in your bathrobe,lie down on the coarse black sand and someone will shovel it on you. It may not sound it but it's really relaxing! The steam's supposed to be good for your skin too. You lie there for 10 minutes, then go take a shower, get rid of the sand and can go in the bath too The shower/bath area's near the sand bath area so be careful people can actually accidently (or not accidently) peek into the bath area from the sand bath area! haha..

We had an awesome dinner in Beppu at an izakaya called 生一本！The food was sooo good, the Master was very nice and friendly, and best of all, it was very very reasonable!! We ate loads and had alcoholic drinks too but the price was probably 1/3 of what it would have been in Tokyo.

Yummy fresh hamachi:

Toriten (とりてん）which is a local specialty and it's yummy but I don't get what's so special about it. it's basically chicken tempura which is deep fried chicken..

琉球（りゅうきゅう - ryukyu) was very very nice and fresh! It's raw fish dipped in soy sauce, spring onions, wasabi..

関さば(seki saba) - according to this site, caught "where the waters of the Pacific Ocean and the Inland Sea converge" and is supposed to be of premium quality. Apparently it's really expensive in other parts of Japan but because Beppu is nearby, the price is reasonable :)

ホルモン鉄板 - I have to admit hormon is a weakness of mine. Fats....too yummy! and I love the texture..drool...

This izakaya's specialty is their chicken wing and it was nice, you can really taste the chicken! I know it sounds weird but if you try it you'll know what I mean.

Young onion tempura! Very sweet and crunchy and delivious :) Didn't expect to like it but I did. Thanks Chico~

Damn. Now I'm missing all the drinks and sours in Japan. 飲みたい！（nomitai! - I want to drink!)

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.