Beppu

Beppu is a major city over on the East side of the Kyushu island. It's famous for it's hot springs (its twinned with Bath in the UK coincidentally) and I was looking forward to giving them a go. But it wasn't to be the case. Japan still has a stigma towards people with tattoos. I'm clearly not Yakuza but not wanting to offend the other people in the baths the hotel staff wouldn't let me in. This was a pattern that continued for the entire trip :(

So I had to make other plans for the night and three of us ended up in a small arcade where I destroyed a Pachinko game by winning so many tokens that I blocked the machine. We also had to physically drag Jeppe from a Donkey Kong coin game that he couldn't stop playing.

So overall, a fairly disappointing night.

A view from the hotel window. The scale of the hotel was vast and contained a number of springs, shopping complex (that's part of it lit up) a large food court and video game complex. It took us 10 minutes of walking down the lengthy corridors to get to the end of it.

The hotel room was stunning with half of the room done in a Japanese style. I chose to sleep on the floor on that side rather than in the bed.

Beppu in the morning. The cloud of smoke coming through the trees behind the building to the right is one of the many natural spas in the area.

From here we were headed to two parks. Harmonyland and Kijima.