My birthday trip!

So the rest of silver week wasn't that exciting for us here, except that we went into Omuta (the large-ish city to the south of us) on Wednesday to have dinner for my birthday. We chose a restaurant named Jamaica. They served pizza, hamburgers and various japanese dishes. Jamaica. We had a delicious curry pizza. It was pretty much curry sauce with carrot and broccoli, etc. put on pizza with some cheese thrown on.

But then this weekend, we rented a car and went on an adventure to Yufuin! It is kinda like the Banff of Kyushu.

First part of the adventure: renting the car! I'd like to point out that in Canada, we won't be able to rent a car for about 2 years. Here, it was no problem. Also, most of the driving took place on the expressway, which would have been terrifying enough for Dylan who was still a little uncomfy driving on the left side of the road. But to make things interesting, no one is Japan even remotely follows the posted speed limits on the expressway. On the way there, the limit was 50 kph and most people were happily going along at about 90-100 kph. I think me panicking and yelling at Dylan helped the situation! On the way back, since it was later in the day and speed limits go up on some roads at night, the speed limit was 80 kph and we drove at about 120-130 kph most of the way and were going just slightly faster than most of the cars in the slow lane, but kinda slower than most in the fast lane.

We got into Yufuin at around 1pm or so, and promptly decided to take a nap in the car. Once we woke up, we wandered around this lake and downtown Yufuin for a bit and went and had lunch around 3pm. Then we decided that we should it up the hot springs before they all closed. And this being Japan - hot springs just mean baths in water that you don't have to heat yourself! Meaning more nakedness! But this time it was fine. After convincing Dylan that I really didn't want to go to a segregated bath house because it would be really boring for me to sit there being stared, he asked around and we found this nearby bathhouse that had a family bath. More importantly, after some confusion, we found out it had private family baths. Meaning that we rented out a room and didn't have to be naked in front of other people. It was lovely. I strongly believe that that is how every hot spring should be and that every house should have one, or at least my future house. After that, we went and had diner and headed back to our bed (read: car) for the night.

The next day, we woke up and started our trek up Yufudaka. Interesting facts about Yufudaka: it was a volcano, it is about 5 times the size of Mt. Finlayson, walking up it is VERY tiring, and it has screaming deer on it. Oh, and climbing up near the top is terrifying since it is really steep, really windy and has chains that you need to hold on to so that you don't plummet to your death. But we made it up (after I lost more or less my body weight in sweat) and it was pretty. By the time we got down, it was time to head home. We got back filled up the car, returned it, and come home. All in all, a pretty good trip!

The End.