Wolfe's Home: Beppu

For our night in Beppu, we stayed at a youth hostel that Mom had reserved. We had two "family rooms" that suited our group just fine. It was a bit nostalgic to stay at a hostel because I stayed in many a one during my two travels throughout Europe. We were pretty tired from getting up so early on the ferry, so went to sleep pretty early.....which made us wake up around 5 am again. A vicious cycle! I think we're still a tiny bit jetlagged and the ferry schedule hasn't helped us with that.

Ami helped strip the sheets from the beds to take to the designated laundry sack.

Another breakfast from Lawson's. Grandpa has been collecting promo stickers off the bakery packages for a gift for another Clark grandchild. He wouldn't let us visit any other convenience store until he had his sticker chart complete. We played along with his obsession and whooped and cheered when the chart was finally full. :)

So my well-trained bargain shopper of a daughter had already perused the Internet for 100 yen shops (like our dollar stores) in Japan. Turns out there is a major chain called Daiso. We had some time to kill, so pulled into the parking lot of this store. It was HUGE! Michaela was going crazy, loving all the cute Japanese things, the detailed packaging, etc. We spent a good bit of time there, but she only got through half of the store. Good thing there is a Daiso close to Grandpa and Grandma's. :)

Unfortunately it was a cool and misty day, but we made the most of it and visited the "hot pots". The area of Beppu is known for their natural hot springs, kind of like a miniature Yellowstone. Despite the poor weather, it gave us the advantage of seeing all the more steam coming out of the ground. Ami didn't care much for the sulfur smell, but this hot pot was cute enough to pose by....looked like Mickey.

Too bad it was too cold and wet to take our shoes off and soak our feet in the springs!

I sure hope we get a nice sunny day to view the cherry blossoms before the trees leaf out!

Thank you, Dad and Mom, for the special treat of this trip. We will have great memories of the family time together.

Ha! The Japanese call these natural springs the "hells". We weren't sure we wanted to enter this "hell emitting gas" green house, but it was worth it to see the beautiful flowers inside. :)

For 100 yen you can buy a prayer from the vending machine and tie it onto a bush.

Beautiful typical Japanese garden area....if you throw a rock and get it to land on the tori, then you will have good luck....or so they say.

So we ended up at McDonald's for lunch. :) It was bound to happen sometime. But I still got some Japanese food.....instead of Shamrock Shakes, they had green tea shakes. It was SO good!

Chris opted for something more his style.

It was too cold to spend much time at the beach, but we strolled out just for a few minutes.

Cracked up at this map! Who in their right mind would want a "hell tour"???

So after our day of venturing around Beppu, we bought some dinner and got ready to board our overnight ferry for Osaka. This time Grandma had some coupons for an upgrade and we all got to stay in our own bunk room instead of a community room. Nice!