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Cover photo: "The man called shiny uncle who loved children"
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Beppu is a spa town in eastern Kyushu, known for its hot thermal springs - onsen. In front of the station, there's a rather unusual statue of a man who helped promote Beppu as a tourist destination. We stayed at the most interesting hotel for our entire trip. The rooms were named after the months of the year and featured a completely classic Japanese style - it felt like time travel.
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| My room and my baggage |
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| Tea room in our hotel |
We had reached the halfway point 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 seeing the aquarium and sea creatures in Kagoshima, we were drawn to the monkeys of Beppu. The monkey park was just 5 kilometers from our hotel, we thought - cool, we'll walk on foot. But the fatigue of constantly packing and moving had taken its toll, and I really had to push myself the last meters of walking along the seaside on the sidewalk beside the highway.
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| To be only 2.6 meters above sea level is not very good when a tsunami comes... |
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| When a monkey beckons, you follow... |
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A funicular that took us to the monkeys
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Japanese macaques
Takasakiyama is a monkey park that is home to about 1,500 Japanese macaques, split into two groups of 700-800 individuals. The park has a few very clear rules: '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 of a small funicular after a ride of about 50 meters, we entered the Monkey Kingdom.
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| Monkeys were everywhere |
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| Monkey families |
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| Feeding time |
I was not sure what to expect, when I heard the term "monkey park", but the scene as we get off the cable car and there are constant screams from every direction, and monkeys coming to greet their "guests" and hover from all possible positions, I will never forget. The monkeys weren't cheeky and didn't jump on us, but even despite that, when walking through hundreds of monkeys, I was waiting for one to land on my head. Park caretakers walked around the park collecting excrements and we witnessed all monkeys swarming a food cart. I think it was sweet potatoes the monkeys were feeding on.
Thankfully, we took a 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 in the chaos, 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, usually with beef and ketchup sauce. It tasted really good.
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| Omuraisu fast-food |
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| Japanese don't ask 'why?' but 'why not?' |
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Supplies for the road: water, tea, omelette in a bun, chocolate twist, banana and pringles
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Beppu concluded our trip to Kyushu. We didn't manage to visit Kumamoto or Nagasaki, but there is always next time... Following destination was Hiroshima.
Since photos won't do it justice, I'm adding a video from monkey hell in Beppu at the end.
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