Golden Week (Part 11): Yufuin and Goodbye Kyushu

Tuesday, May 5
Beppu is well known as an onsen town, but in recent years, it's gained more of a sleazy reputation; Japanese tourists now prefer stays in neighboring Yufuin. We thus thought it worth a visit and drove west!

The mountainous drive from Beppu to Yufuin is breathtaking--expansive emerald hills with scatterings of large boulders beg to be explored. Or at least seen from nearer than in the seat of a car. I'm no nature girl, but the land was utterly spectacular, like nothing I've ever seen. It's the sort of place that makes you wonder why human beings would live in the lights and concrete of big cities when they could live here. It's unfortunate that we only passed through, but if I have a chance to return in the future, I'd love to visit Kyushu for the natural sights (such as Mount Aso and the forests of Yakushima) we didn't have time for on this journey.

In Yufuin, we began the morning with another surprise from Chris: a visit to a small museum devoted to Marc Chagall!

He had planned on dropping me off, then visiting the nearby Automobile Museum, but as the roads were narrow and crowded with tourists, Chris joined me for a view of Chagall's colorful circus prints.

The art museum houses a sweets cafe and sits on a small pond, my idea of heaven.

Yufuin is quite the perfect artists' community. The singing of birds and the quiet trickling of water fill the narrow, wildflower-lined roads with nature's most calming sounds. Small signs advertising organic food cafes peek out between houses. The main tourist road (swarming with visitors that day) features small shops selling vintage books, handsewn purses in the shape of elephants, and warm, grilled rice crackers. I could live quite happily in Yufuin, I think, though the area drove Chris a little nutty.

For lunch we ate at a family-owned restaurant with dark wood tables, walls, and floors. The menu states that all ingredients are purchased along the very street the restaurant stands on, and that much of the fresh vegetables come from a grandparent's yard. Chris and I ordered toriten and chicken namban set meals, which we shared.

We left Yufuin without having explored its shops much, as we were running on a tight schedule. We caught the expressway to Showa-no-Machi, a collection of streets done in Showa Era theme, where every visitor strolls the streets sipping from a glass Coca-Cola bottle.

A toy museum with a collection of Showa toys and movie posters.

Though we had eaten lunch earlier, we couldn't pass up the Showa Era school lunch, complete with bottled milk. We ordered the vinegar pork, which was tough and not too yummy, but the concept we loved! More places should serve school lunch--only in a delicious version.

We left Showa no Machi and returned to Fukuoka Prefecture, where we visited Chris's ancestral village of Chikujo. We wandered the residential streets for awhile, not certain of where to go, but perhaps Chris was able to experience a small hint of connection to the land he stood on as land that migrant relatives departed.

We finally left Kyushu at seven at night, which did not make for good travel back to Hyogo; the trek takes six hours or so, not including time to rest. We eventually worked out a plan of stopping at service areas for bathroom breaks and naps in the car throughout the night. We arrived at Miki at six the following morning, with enough time for showers and for Chris to drive back to Tamba.

お疲れさん、クリス！

And thus our Grand Kyushu Adventure, our last big trip in Japan, came to an end.