February, 2024 | Japanese Countryside Travel Notes

2024-02-15

Beppu where both people and food are steamed

kannawa hotspring view from east entrance bus stop

It seems that since the Edo period, common people have enjoyed ranking hot spring resorts with sumo-like rankings, but in modern rankings, Beppu Onsen is always ranked as the western “Yokozuna.” Beppu is like a collection of many hot spring resorts, but regardless of their ranking, there are small hot spring resorts all over Japan that have their own unique characteristics, for example Geto hot spring, Ginzan hot spring, Matsukawa hot spring and Tsuta hot spring.

geto retro hotel

ginzan hot spring

Matsukawa Hot Spring

tsuta hot spring

Hot springs can be found everywhere in Beppu. When you climb up the hill and look out over the city, you can see hot spring steam rising from everywhere, and you can feel that the town of Beppu is built on magma underground. The best view point is the bus stop of Kan-nawa Hotspring East Exit or Steam observation deck with small parking space. (>>refer to the map below)

There are public hot springs all over the place with no frills, just a tiled bathtub in the middle. There is no caretaker at the entrance, and locals enter without permission. In addition, the steam bath with medicinal herbs inside the sauna has a relaxing natural scent. Takegawara Onsen, a splendid Karahafu hot spring near the coast, will test your mettle with its heat.

kannawa hotspring sujiyu1

kannawa hotspring sujiyu2 no charge for local people

kannawa hotspring sujiyu3 cat with cafe over there

kannawa hotspring public bath with steam

kannawa hotspring medicinal herbs sekisho

kannawa hotspring sauna with japanese herb sekisho

beppu takegawara hotspring

kannawa hotspring steam from the slit of road

The ultimate way to enjoy hot springs is to cook steamed dishes. You procure your own ingredients, arrange them in a colander, and cook them just over hot spring steam for the optimal time for each ingredient. Steaming with hot spring steam has a slightly different taste than steaming on a regular stove, probably because of the hot spring ingredients. The Yanagiya Inn we stayed at has an Italian restaurant that serves steamed dishes, as well as a kitchen where you can cook your own steamed dishes.

kannawa hotspring yanagiya1 entrance

kannawa hotspring yanagiya3 kitchen

kannawa hotspring yanagiya4 steam cooking

kannawa hotspring yanagiya5 before steam

kannawa hotspring yanagiya6 recommended steam time for each ingredient

otto e sette oita

otto1 amberjack salad

otto2 spagetti boiled by hotspring water

otto3 swallow genovese

otto4 hand made bread

otto5 ice

otto6 hell boiled dish

otto7 dish with vegitable

otto8 yellow powdered persimmon

otto9 pudding boiled hotspring

otto10

The best way to enjoy Beppu is to experience something a little different from the typical tourist route of visiting Jigoku Onsen (Hell Hotspring). Of course, I won’t forget to visit Jigoku Onsen.

beppu hell in the sea

beppu greenhouse using hotspring

beppu hell of monk

beppu hell of blood

beppu sightseeing bus of demon style

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Buddha statues from Usuki cannot be taken out

Buddha statues are made of five types of materials: metal, lacquer, wood, stone, and earth, and the materials have changed over time. Naturally, costs, time, and techniques vary depending on the material, but it’s surprising that the old ones are superior in all respects. In the Asuka period, represented by Horyu-ji Temple, Buddha statues were made of gilt bronze, although they were small, but later on, lacquer was used to make them lighter so that they could be carried out in case of frequent temple fires caused by lightning. The Asura statue at Kofukuji Temple is a representative work.

shoujyouji kakushi (Source: website of village Yugawa)

Furthermore, as Buddhism spread, the demand for Buddhist statues increased, and people began to make Buddhist statues using wood, which was easy to procure and could be produced in a short time. During the Heian period, there were many Buddhist statues made of one piece of wood. There are more wooden Buddhist statues in Nara than in Kyoto, but the surviving single-wood Buddha statues are valuable because the Heike family burned down temples that sided with the Genji clan at the end of the Heian period. Therefore, the precious single-wooden Buddha statues surprisingly remain in the region. One of the representative examples is the Yakushi Nyorai statue, a national treasure, at Shoujyouji Temple in the Aizu region of Fukushima Prefecture, where Buddhist culture was flourishing.

When it became difficult to procure a single large piece of wood to carve a Buddha statue from, they introduced the method of marquetry and division of labor to enable mass production in a short time. This led to the development of the Kei-ha school, whose representative was the Buddhist sculptor Unkei. From the Kamakura period onward, muscular statues were made using marquetry.

On the other hand, regarding stone making, large amounts of marble suitable for carving were produced around the Mediterranean Sea, so stone sculptures were produced in large quantities during the Greco-Roman period, but in Japan there was a lack of natural stone suitable for carving. As a result, 60-70% of the Buddha statues carved directly into cliffs are located in Oita Prefecture.

usuki2 amida

usuki3

usuki4 holes for scriptures

usuki5

usuki7 sannosan

usuki8

usuki9 kosono

usuki11

usuki13 torii at fukada

Usuki is home to many stone cliff Buddha statues that have been designated as national treasures, and are said to date from the late Heian period to the Kamakura period. Not only is the carving beautiful, but the colors remain as well. There are all kinds of Buddhist statues, including Amida Nyorai, Yakushi Nyorai, Dainichi Nyorai, and Jizo Bosatsu.

usuki12 black garlic famous for TV shopping

By the way, many of the souvenir shops here sell black garlic as a way to promote health, but I wonder why. I heard that you can make black garlic yourself by heating and fermenting raw garlic in an electronic jar for 20 days, as I saw on a Japanese satellite TV advertising program. It’s quite expensive to buy. All the souvenir shops reminded me that Japan’s satellite broadcasts are mostly commercials for health-promoting foods, jewelry, or bedding.

2024-02-09

Laputa (Ghibli) is not the only castle in the sky

The next morning, the mountain road leading back to the Yamanami Highway was a tunnel of autumn leaves, shining brightly.

kuju highway0

kuju highway1

kuju highway2

kuju highway3 kuju hightland

kuju highway4 kuju mountains view

On the road to Taketa City, I come across a light truck with an elegant English Pointer on its back. The pointer on the loading platform does not look at me easily. He is balanced well on the carrier.

kuju highway5 wow!

kuju highway6

kuju highway7 eye contact

Meanwhile, I arrived at Taketa. I didn’t have enough time to visit the old town (>refer to the post in the near future), so I headed straight to Oka Castle. This castle was the setting for “Kojo no Tsuki” (“The moon over the ruined castle” in English) composed by Rentaro Taki who spent his childhood here. It’s interesting that the admission ticket comes in the form of an old period scroll with a guide map of Oka Castle, but it gets in the way and is inconvenient when it comes to taking it home. Although only the stone walls remain of this mountain castle, the stonework is beautiful and draws a parabolic curve.

oka castle2 entrance

oka castle4

oka castle7 why need complicate design

oka castle9 do not the same thing — Do not the same thing

Since there is no protective fence, you can sit on the protruding tip of the stone wall, but it doesn’t feel like you’re alive. It feels like my lower abdomen is falling out. Those with a strong heart can admire the beautiful Kuju Mountain Range from here. There are several castles in the sky floating in the morning mist in Japan, but Oka Castle, which appears out of nowhere amidst layers of mountains, is a true Ghibli castle in the sky.

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Giant Suspension Bridge and unrelated snake spectacle

I used to think that suspension bridges were built out of necessity, but seeing this made me realize that they were purposely built in places where they didn’t need to be built, just to make people feel scary. Many people walk on the suspension bridge, which looks just like a wide pedestrian bridge. Although the suspension bridge uses fairly thick wire rope, you can still feel some sway. There is a magnificent waterfall that can only be seen from here, but the scale of the view from the suspension bridge is so large that the waterfall feels small.

johgakura bridge

look down from bridge 1

nakatsugawa valley bridge

There are also places in the Tohoku region where the views from bridges are dynamic. Johgakura Bridge in Aomori Prefecture is a good place to stop by on your way to the Shirakami Mountain Range and Lake Towada as above photos. It’s also a good idea to stop by the bridge that spans the Nakatsugawa Valley in Fukushima Prefecture near Goshikinuma on Mt. Bandai.

suspension bridge5

suspension bridge2

suspension bridge1

Once you cross the suspension bridge, you will see a building that looks like a haunted house at the festival venue. In front of the house, there was a crowd of people who seemed to be hesitating whether to enter or not. This place holds a spectacle where customers can touch and hold white snakes in hopes of attracting financial luck. I was reluctant to enter, but my companion was blinded by financial fortune and we decided to enter.

suspension bridge6 white snake named toguro

suspension bridge7 white snake named makitsuki

When I pay, the thick curtain in front of me opens and I come face to face with two white snakes. One of them is called “Toguro,” which coils itself on my hand, and the other is “Makitsuki,” which wraps around my arm.” No matter who holds them, these snakes maintain the same posture as their namesake, so these must be their favorite poses. The touch was unlike anything I had ever felt before, neither cold nor warm, and I was filled with the desire to return them as soon as possible. In the end, it was the people at the show booths who were lucky to make money.

Detour

Tonight we will be staying at Kiyasuya in Sujiyu Onsen, but Sujiyu Onsen is also home to a famous public bathhouse “Utase-yu.” The name Sujiyu originally came from the fact that the hot spring ingredients are effective for soothing tired muscles, but the public bath is an ultimate hot spring where the hot spring water is dropped from a height of about 3 meters to soothe the body.

sujiyu hotspring4

sujiyu hotspring1

sujiyu hotspring2 utaseyu

sujiyu hotspring3

kuju tade wetlands

kuju tade hell valley

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Figures inside Nabegataki waterfall

It became famous after it was used in the filming of several tea commercials on TV. It was created by erosion after the eruption of Mt. Aso 90,000 years ago. It’s fascinating to go behind the waterfall. However, people accumulate there, so if you take a photo of the waterfall from outside, people will appear behind the waterfall curtain like ghosts. It seems like admission is now restricted by advance reservations online.

You won’t be able to see the waterfall until you have descended quite a bit from the entrance, so you can see the sunlight shining into the basin of the waterfall, which is beautiful.

nabegataki waterfall with sun rays

It’s difficult to talk about the beauty of waterfalls. First of all, there is no taxonomy of waterfalls, so each person imagines a waterfall in a variety of ways. There are waterfalls that fall in a dynamic straight line, waterfalls with many tiered basins, waterfalls that cascade down the rock surface, and waterfalls that flow delicately and quietly as if pulling a thread, each with its own unique charm. Under such circumstances, I wonder whose permission they get to decide on the top 100 waterfalls. There are wonderful waterfalls all over Japan, so I hope you find your favorite one by yourself. Here I will introduce my favorites, Snoopy Falls and Nametsu Falls.