The last morning in Kumamoto we got up early and immediately headed in the direction of Mt. Aso. Our goal was to reach Beppu in 3 days. The first 25 km we cycled were pretty flat, but after that a pretty long incline followed. We did have to push for a short while, but mostly it was pretty manageable to cycle. Robin was a bit apprehensive about the climb, as the day before we basically took the same road back from Aso by car and it looked like a very long, quite steep decline back then; so what would that mean going the opposite direction but on a bike? Luckily, we had little problems with it. After a few km into the uphill section, we stopped at a bento place to get some reasonably priced food. We eat a shitload on days that we cycle, as apparently you burn about 6 to 8k calories when cycling for 5 to 6 hours. That also means you’re almost constantly peckish, which isn’t too much of an issue as all the food is delicious here. It is a bit expensive (although eating out and food in general is quite cheap in Japan), but at least we get to try everything there is (which is basically 50% of the reason we decided to cycle Japan!).
After about 8 to 10km of uphill cycling, we entered the Mt. Aso caldera, which meant that you were basically surrounded on all sides by “mountains”. But the mountains were all created by this bigass super volcano that is several kilometers in diameter itself and the caldera is about 25 to 30km in diameter. It is quite impressive to think that this thing could actually erupt (it is active and since last year there is a zone people aren’t allowed to enter as the volcanic activity is too high). Anyway, we weren’t going to go too close to any of the several peaks of the volcano itself, we were going to cycle across the caldera and exit on the other side. We took some small breaks at convenience stores, but mostly we just cycled on until we were going to start the climb up out of the caldera on the other side. We encountered a post office literally on the corner before the mountain road we had to enter, on the last flat part we were going to cycle on. We wanted to send 2 letters to the Netherlands and we had been carrying them for a few days, mostly forgetting them, but all of a sudden we thought, why not send them from here? So, we entered the small postal station that was manned by two staff in their 60’s (I think?) and explained we would like to send 2 letters to the Netherlands (which is in Europe, as the man repeated to himself, seemingly to remind himself what the postal costs for overseas shipping were). They kindly helped us and it seems they were quite happy that people from overseas visited their postal office and could actually converse with them (somewhat in my case). After some explanation of what we were doing there and what we were planning to do afterwards, we left having posted the letters for a grand total of 300 yen (2 euro) and continued on towards the climb.
Which was quite tough, we pushed our bikes for a decent bit and cycled the rest. When we were at the edge of the caldera, we spotted a small cafe/souvenir shop that had the best view over Mt. Aso and the caldera ever. The sun was setting, giving everything that beautiful glow. So, we got some snacks (sweet potato fries and a (horse) meat bun) and enjoyed the view. We had a ways to go and as mentioned, the sun was setting, so we continued on. In the end, we cycled another 20km that evening/night (mostly downhill luckily) and encountered the ‘Welcome in Oita Prefecture’ sign, which meant we were officially half way to Beppu. Which was pretty cool, as it would be the last prefecture on Kyushu we would see before heading to Shikoku.
Before we knew it, it became DARK dark and we didn’t really know yet where to camp for the night. We had arrived in the village of Kuju and asked the cashier lady in the local “supermarket” (it was very small) if she would know a place we might be able to camp for the night. She said she didn’t really know about camping, but she pointed us towards a small guest house (民宿). We headed there, as we didn’t really have any other options, but when we arrived, it didn’t look like the guest house was open, the lights were off and it was dead quiet. Before arriving there, we cycled past a house that was close by the guest house location and the light had been on (we had seen an older Japanese woman there), but we didn’t know if she was actually associated with the guest house. Just as we were about to turn around, the lady approached us from behind the house and asked us whether we would like to stay for the evening. She was quite relieved to notice we could speak some Japanese and she explained she thought we might have been just some lost foreigners that took the wrong exit (not unheard of with us to be honest). She disappeared for a bit to get the room in order, then returned to have Robin fill in our information (just our names really, what use was a Dutch address to her she explained). The rate was 6000 yen (about 40 euro) and for that we got a small living room, a bedroom with two large beds, a bathroom and a kitchen. Quite luxurious, especially considering we only used the bathroom and bedroom for that evening. The lady had explained we could just leave the next morning whenever and leave the key next to the door, which was perfect for us.
In the end, we cycled about 80km that day. The next day we would probably reach Beppu already, although we had planned a 3 day journey, 2 days seemed to be enough. We went to sleep in a warm cozy bed, whilst outside it was freezing.
Today was Robin’s birthday! After some congratulatory cuddles and opening a letter that our friends gave us before we left, we headed out in good spirits. We did notice we had some muscle and joint aches from the day before, but Beppu was not that far away, so we would reckoned it would be fine. We had about 46 km to cycle that day with just one short climb towards the end of the day. After the first 20km we encountered a small race track in the mountains with a Japanese kei-car (special class of tiny car in Japan that has to have a small engine and small dimensions) drifting through the corners. There was a decently sized Japanese man in there really putting the thing through its’ paces. The man did a few laps and parked his car. He saw us standing there and asked us where we were from and Robin asked him if it was okay to take some pictures, which he said was fine. At that point his friends arrived and he took one out on the track, which provided us with another opportunity to check out the hilarity of such a tiny car lifting one of its’ back wheels of the ground in the corners.
I filmed a few laps, which you can check out here (it looks slower than it was in real life, I assure you) and did ponder whether I should ask him if I could join for a lap, but it seemed they were enjoying their time together, so I didn’t bother. Before we left, the gentleman gave us a bag of curry-senbei (rice crackers). We also wondered, whilst cycling away if maybe driving through Japan in such a tiny car would have been fun, especially since we had the climb coming up.
Luckily the climb was pretty doable and with about 15km to go to Beppu, we were led (by Komoot) to a downhill forest road that had a gradient of about 15%. We both had our doubts, especially after our little adventure with the mountain road between Isa and Ashikita, but we tried anyway after we saw some cars exiting the road. The national route wasn’t the most fun place to be anyway, with the car fumes and them speeding past us going about 80km/h. It was a beautiful road, incredibly steep, so we basically had to continually brake the entire way down, but it led us through a dense, mossy cedar forest which meant the sun almost disappeared in there. Maybe we did get some light from our disc brakes almost lighting up from the work they were doing preventing us from barreling down the road at 60km/h, haha.
We ended up in a small village with a view of the ocean and a koi pond, where we took a last small break before heading into Beppu. Robin tried feeding the koi some crumbs of our snacks, but they didn’t really seem to care, just swimming on as if to say: ‘we don’t need your charity’.
After cycling down a bit more, we had a great view over Beppu, the sea and the mountains. We stopped for a bit to take some pictures and I wanted to fly my drone to get some cool shots on a small mountain road nestled in the mountainside. There was no-one around and I was waiting for a moment like this to do something I had been thinking about for the last 7 years. Especially the last few weeks in Japan, I had been waiting for the perfect moment, as I wanted to make sure Robin and I were alone. So, there on that small road in the sun, overlooking Beppu, I asked Robin to marry me. She said yes, luckily, or we would have a very awkward 5 months ahead of us! I was of course incredibly happy, as I love her incredibly much, but I can’t say I wasn’t a bit relieved to hear that she hadn’t expected it and hadn’t spotted the ring I had been carrying with me for the entire time in Japan until that moment. Of course, I also flew my drone with the intention of filming the moment I asked her to marry me, but we’ll keep that awkwardness to ourselves. Anyway, we were both in the best mood possible whilst we cycled the last few km’s down the mountain and into Beppu. We had already booked a fancy onsen hotel in Beppu to celebrate Robin’s birthday (and now also our engagement!) but since we’d anticipated a three day journey, we would have to camp for the night before we could check in.
We didn’t really do all that much on our days in Beppu other than lazing around, enjoying the onsen in the hotel as much as we could and eating some good food, we chose to add a short bit of it to this blog instead of making a whole new one. The first official night in Beppu was going to have to be in a park, camping out, as I said before. Luckily we are getting better at picking our ‘campsites’. We take a few things into account: ‘is the park in a busy/lively location?’ Most of the time, we don’t pick those spots, as the less people going past us, the better, as if we’re not bothering anyone, we’re less likely to be told to F off by anyone. We also try to avoid more obvious kids-oriented or sports-oriented parks, as often, these are used early in the morning and we especially don’t want to be those foreigners camping next to a kids playground. I can imagine people might not like seeing some sweaty foreigners in a tent next to where their kids are playing. In the end we found a park that was mostly just grass that seemed not to be used often and the light was already off in the surrounding houses. We slept great there and left before anyone could’ve even noticed us.
The next day we parked our bikes at the station and left our luggage at the hotel and checked out the 7 hells of Beppu, the only real tourist attraction we wanted to see whilst we were there. It’s a tour where you get to check out 7 different hot springs that all have their own ‘gimmick’. They’re not the sort you can bathe in, many of them have temperatures of 80-90 degrees (which is where the name comes from, the sulfur, smoke and temperatures that only demons could withstand etc.). Anyway, I filmed some stuff so if you want you can get a bit of an idea of what it was like here. We used a foot bath at the first hot spring to soak our weary feet, which was great for us (maybe not for the others using it, sorry about that). As an aside, onsen (as Japanese call hot springs) are often about 42-44 degrees Celsius, which is about the limit of what we can bear, anything above that is more painful than relaxing.
Around 3 pm we checked in to our hotel. I had not been inside yet, Robin had handed off our luggage in the morning whilst I stayed with the bicycles, but now I could see it was truly *FANCY*. You had to take off your shoes at the entrance, the entire hotel had tatami floors, the staff were dressed in traditional Japanese clothing-type uniforms and then there was us: sweaty, wearing rain pants and smelly socks. We had booked the hotel a few days before arriving, as we can’t really book way ahead because we don’t really know when we will be in a certain city. That means we often get a pretty decent price, as it’s quite last minute, but it also means we just book something without thoroughly checking everything about the hotel. In this case, we were pleasantly surprised, as apparently there were 7 different private onsen on the roof, each with their own ‘theme’, that we could use. I guess they based the idea on the 7 hells, but luckily these were a lot more pleasant to use them we did! In the end, we used 5 out of 7 in the 2 days we were there and shortly checked out the other 2 to see what they were like. We really enjoy the onsen, it is incredibly relaxing, but some Japanese can sit in them for more than an hour, but I feel slightly cooked after about 20 minutes and then I’m good for a few hours. We enjoyed the luxury a lot and would recommend anyone to do something similar if possible whenever you’re in Japan! The next day we would be going back to cycling and camping, after taking a boat from Beppu to Yawatahama on Shikoku.
