Not that we are trying tor rush, but we have lived in Okinawa now for over a month and still haven't caught up on our mainland experiences! We will try to plug along so we can stay in chronological order (so Kirk's brain doesn't explode) but get to our new island life (complete with the Bruce) soon!
Before we knew we were moving, Kirk and I decided to take advantage of a long 4th of July weekend to see some places on our bucket list down south, on Kyushu.
KUMAMOTO
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| A view of Kumamoto Castle from down below |
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| A beautiful view of the city from the top of the castle |
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| We had to take a picture of the gift-wrapped fruit box of a cantaloupe, mango, and grapes that cost about $48!! Japanese fruit sure is delicious, but it is 'spensive. |
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| Kirk loves taking pictures of these funny shop names & signs. |
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| This is an actual dish you can order at one of the restaurants!! |
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| We noticed this advertisement for a beauty salon... |
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| And could not help but notice this guy is trying a little too hard...he could use some training from Derek Zoolander |
MOUNT ASO - an ACTIVE volcano!
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| This is one of the foot hills near Mt. Aso nicknamed "the rice bowl" |
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| The Mt. Aso area is so beautiful...many different scenic views between all the mountains and lakes. |
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| So...this is a picture of a picture! The day that we visited, the volcano was spewing gasses and the cable car to the top was closed. Apparently this is what the inside of the volcano looks like on a clear day! |
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| Here are the gasses it was spewing! Even if they let us up there we wouldn't have been able to see anything anyway. |
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| We went hiking up a near by mountain to get a workout in...plus it was a pretty great view! |
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| Another view of the "rice bowl" mountain...from much higher elevation. |
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| On the way back to the highway from the Mt. Aso area we came across a road side display of "bush art". How else do you describe this?!?! |
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| Imitation "bush art" |
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| Kirk giving a big hug to her giraffe |
BEPPU
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| After our trek up Mt. Aso we stayed the night at a Ryokan in Beppu, which is the city known for it's natural hot springs. Here we are donning our Yakata's before going to the hotel's onsen. |
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| This is the hotel's onsen. Don't let the picture fool you, this water is really hot but oh so refreshing after a long day of hiking. |
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| Of course you have to clean yourself up before getting in the hot tub. |
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| We went walking toward town to find a restaurant to eat at for dinner. As we like to do when we travel, this little place is a random restaurant we found but the food was really really good, as evidenced by this cut of Japanese beef in the window. |
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| Our first course was this assorted sashimi plate...so fresh and delicious! |
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| I was presented with the decision to order the Japanese beef or the local special which is raw horse sashimi...you can tell from the picture which one I ordered!!! I will also choose cooked cow over raw horse! |
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| I was still hungry so I also ordered these meat skewers... Kirk wants y'all to know she did not eat the meat - she maintains her Pescatarian ways! |
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| A whole deep-fried fish... |
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| This is also another local specialty...the conch! The Japanese couple next to us ordered this for us because they wanted us to try it. |
The next day, Kirk and I visited three of the seven "Hells", AKA the Beppu hot springs.
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| These are natural hot springs, so the steam comes straight out of the earth. |
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| At one of the hot springs, they hard boil eggs in the natural boiling sulfur water. |
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| This was probably the grossest hot spring! The bubbles from this clay hot spring made a gurgling sound that was surprisingly fun to watch. |
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| This red hot spring is known as the Devil's hot spring due to its color. |
Well, there you have it! We had a BLAST and are SO grateful we were able to see these stunning sites before we left the mainland!
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