Visit to Yufuin

(Jan. 9, 2011) This week we’re going to re-visit Japan, this time visiting the southern island of Kyushu where my wife, Kayo, and I spent two weeks in November. We stayed at a resort in the city of Beppu, a world famous hot springs resort on the Pacific coast in Oita Prefecture. My concern as we arrived in Beppu was that we were going to need to take some fairly long one-day trips  because I was of the opinion there wasn’t much else to see in Oita Prefecture besides Beppu. As it turns out, I was wrong, as there’s some very very nice places to visit. Our first excursion was into the mountains, via an hour and a half train ride, to the much smaller hot springs resort area of Yufuin. The little town is filled with luxury hot springs hotels and the main street is lined with nice little shops, restaurants and coffee houses. As Kayo shopped I enjoyed the beautiful Christmas music in several of the shops. For lunch we went into a small restaurant where the main item on the menu was a Yufuinburger which was served in a sort of cone-shaped paper holder. The burger stays in the cone as one eats it to catch the juices dripping from it. It was juicy and tasty!

I knew as we boarded the train for the ride back to Beppu that we would return to Yufuin and we did only a couple days later. This time the highlight of our time in Yufuin was a ride around town in a horse-drawn, sort of modern day, covered wagon. During the ride we visited a very old temple and a shrine among other things. After visiting the temple and waiting to re-board a small pickup loaded with bales of alfalfa hay passed by. They were the first bales of hay I had ever seen in Japan. The trees at the shrine were probably the tallest trees I have ever seen in Japan. There were also several trunks of trees that had blown down in typhoons that were about seven feet in diameter. The trees are called Sugi and are of the cypress family. The tallest known Sugi in Japan is a little over 230 feet tall. 

We hope to visit Yufuin again.