November 2016, part five - Beppu

Beppu is a spa town in the east of Kyushu with lots of hot thermal springs - onsen. In front of the station is a pretty weird statue of a man who helped promote Beppu as a tourist site. We stayed in the most interesting hotel for our whole trip. Rooms were named by months of the year and in a completely classic Japanese style, it felt like time travel.

The inscription reads: "The man called shiny uncle who loved children"

My room and the baggage

Tea room in our hotel

We reached half of our stay in Beppu. It was time to relax and organize all the experiences... But time pushed us here and when we wanted to see something, we had to move again. After the aquarium and sea animals in Kagoshima we were attracted by monkeys in Beppu. Only 5 kilometers from our hotel, we thought - cool, we'll walk on foot. But the fatigue of constantly packing and moving drove me, and I really had to push myself the last meters of walking along the seaside on the sidewalk beside the highway.

To stay only 2.6 meters above sea level is not very good when a tsunami comes...

When a monkey beckons you follow...

A funicular that took us to the monkeys

Japanese macaques

Takasakiyama is a monkey park that is home to about 1,500 Japanese macaques divided into two groups of 700-800 individuals. Park rules included: Do not feed the monkeys, Do not touch the monkeys and Do not look the monkeys in the eyes because you can provoke them. After catching one of the last entrances to the park and getting out in a small funicular after about 50 meters we entered the Monkey Kingdom.

Monkeys were everywhere

Monkey families

Feeding time

I don't know what I expected under the term "monkey park", but the scene as we get off the cable car, there are constant screams from everywhere, and monkeys come to their "guests" to hover from all possible positions, I will never forget. The monkeys weren't cheeky and didn't jump on us, but even though when walking through hundreds of monkeys, I was waiting for one to land on my head. Care keepers walked around the park collecting excrements and we witnessed a huge monkey run and attack on a food cart. I think it was sweet potatoes the monkeys were feeding on.

Fortunately, we took the bus from the park to the hotel and although we were just guessing how and how much to pay for the trip, the bus driver was even more confused about us than we were. There were two machines in the bus, one for the change of banknotes into coins and the other for the actual payment in coins. So some of us just changed notes to coins without paying :)

On the way to the hotel we stopped to eat (I was properly starved) and shop at the local mall. We had a so-called omuraisu, which is rice in an omelette with beef and ketchup sauce. It tasted really good.

Omuraisu fast-food

Japanese don't ask 'why?' but 'why not?'

Supplies for the road: water, tea, omelette in a bun, chocolate twist, banana and pringles

Beppu concluded our trip to Kyushu. We didn't include for example Kumamoto or Nagasaki (next time...) and our next destination was Hiroshima.

Since photos won't do it justice, I'm adding a video from monkey hell in Beppu. Part 6 - Hiroshima.