Beppu... Beppu... Beppu... (Day 1)

Woo, where do i start? I guess things will only make sense if we start off with some background info. In Japan a couple of days at the end of April and the beginning of May marks what is called "Golden Week", to dumb it down a bit (honestly i don't know about the holiday's history so I'll talk like i know my stuff) it's just a couple of selected days to give workers some time to relax and be together with their families. I was really suprised at how well parents treated their kids here because if i had kids, and i had time off, I'd be on the couch playing Nintendo.

Anyways on to the story. Me and Becs decided to go to Beppu with our two other friends (James and Binkz) for our Golden Week long weekend (which started for us on Friday night, and ended Tuesday [today]). Beppu is known for its hot springs (where the hot water naturally comes from underground) and apparently it's one of the top 3 tourist sites in Japan. Shiny uncle says so:

Shiny Uncle - The man responsible for bringing the tourism industry in Beppu to life. You rock shiny uncle!

Anyways we book a train to leave on Friday afternoon. The train ride (on the express train) from Kitakyushu to Beppu took just under an hour which was heaps good. The train was nice and classy too, i felt like i was on a plane:

"Tin, you are so awesome. Thanks for reminding me, I know I'm awesome." - Tin

*Geez what an idiot... i have to spend 1.5 hours with this guy next to me!?!?*

We were surprised when this lady showed up:

aaaah foooood - it wasn't fun then the kid from over there threw up something cheesy though T_T . We managed to see a truely rural part of Japan:

We then met up with James who had already arrived 12 hours earlier (apparently he made a mistake and booked his bus ticket for the wrong time, LOL) and we headed out to grab something to eat. Along the way we bumped into some Engrish:

What's meatjuice without the sauce?
Truely a mystery...

I think we ended up going into this restaurant because of its cool Engrish. Binkz arrived at around 9pm while we were having dinner:

After dinner we were just chatting about our experiences so far in Japan until we heard a bell rining, it was strangely reminiscent of the Home ice cream we got back home, so me and James headed out to see what all the commotion was about. Alas, it was ice cream!

The sign says "ice candy" when it's translated. Did we really know what we were buying?

...Apparently not... all our sticks looked like this

Binkz trying to jump into the nostril, the camera's this way Binkz!

We were all pretty buggered by then so we decided to head back to the hostel.

*giggles* You guys can't see me! Ninja skills!

View of the room from the floor


"Look Tin, i can count to 2!" - Binkz
*giggle* "Is that all? I learned to count to 3 last week" - James


Sinks just outside our room.

Smoking room/commune lounge



Traditional Japanese room



Kitchen/Dining room


Wii!!!!

By the time we went to bed it was around 2 or 3... we stayed up chatting about stuff - but it all began when Quoc found out his camera cost a hundred bucks more than what Bianca got it for LOL total ownage:

Me after finding out that Binkz bought the same camera as me, but for $100 less...

The gayness begins...

Beppu Tower

That's it for Day 1, I'd write more but uploading photos takes too long. Stay tuned for blog entries on the hell onsens, monkey mountain, hello kitty land, and all of us being totally random.