To Beppu

Today we got our rental car and hit the road to Beppu. On the way there we stopped for lunch at a noodle place. This is champon, a "Chinese-style" noodle soup (in the same way omurice or hamburger steaks are "Western-style" Japanese food). It's a specialty in Kyushu, especially in Nagasaki. It was nice to have a different kind of noodle soup.

 Here are various pictures of scenery on the road.

 We also stopped by a bakery. The little pizza breads smelled really good.

Finally, we arrived at our destination: sunny California!

 Big nose tengu.

 Here's the fancy Beppu manholes.

 Garlicman! Lookit his little dingle.

 Here's an outdoor foot bath. 

Beppu is full of hot springs so they even have these little mini ones around.

 Bep to the boppu

 We visited a nice onsen that had a special waterfall bath. It was like getting a back massage while bathing. There were also this series of pipes outside the building spitting out steam, which I found a little weird.

 Here's the onsen foot bath. The hot water comes out on top and trickles down over the branches to cool down.

For dinner we went to a chicken place to grill chicken offal.

 And this is chicken tempura (toriten) which is another specialty in Beppu.