A Weekend in Oita-Ken, Kyushu

The past weekend I took trip down to Kyushu and into Oita-Ken. I originally didn’t plan on going, but since it was Andy’s birthday and there was a concert on, I decided I would make my way down for the weekend. The trip down to Oita-ken and Hita city, where my friend Jeffery lives was really easy as it only took one train change and about 2 hours. I arrived around 5 and went straight to Jeffery’s apartment. Well he was kind enough to spend two hours the night before cleaning the washroom, bathroom and my bedroom so all 3 were spotless. As for his living room and kitchen, that was entirely a different story. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this in my life, take a look for yourself…pictures say a 1000 words as they say. I can honestly say it looks worse in real life then in this picture. The pile of garbage actually extends well into the living room.

So I toured around his town, called “Yamakuni” literally Mountain country and this place is gorgeous. One of the prettiest places I have ever been in Japan as it has sprawling hills cut with rivers. I really enjoyed the scenery and also just cruising around in his car, as I haven’t really sat in a car for almost a year. Making me really wanting to get a car to just do road trips in. (Picture below: Tammy, Jeffery and Kiyoko)

That night we met up with Kiyoko, Andy and a bunch of other JET’s at a local lounge in town. I really like the foreigner community in Oita, since it’s a sort of countryside so the JETs are all really close and pretty tight knit, as opposed to Hiroshima where there is alot of people spread out over a large area. After the lounge bar we went to a dart bar and we spent a good few hours playing darts and taking advantage of an all you can drink. I managed to squeak out a last shot victory at darts and celebrated it with another JET named Phil. Overall, it was a lot of fun seeing Andy again and celebrating his birthday.

We got home around 5ish and I managed to crash out pretty much when we got home. I was awaken by Jeffery cleaning as another friend of ours, Tammy (who I met in Tokyo from Calgary) made her way down from Yamaguchi, the prefecture between Hiroshima and Kyushu island. We picked up Kiyoko in town and then Tammy from the station and made our way to the venue.

The concert was held halfway up Mt. Hachizen and it had a nice built in stage and a great view of the surrounding area. It wasn’t packed with people, but the music was pretty good and had a few good bands. There was some pretty funny musicians with some pretty intresting indie stuff. A highlight was this Japanese band that played Irish folk music. All in all the weather was great and we spent the day just chatting and chilling in the mountains.

There were also a bunch of flea market venders there used clothing and handmade crafts. The picture above is when I was joking around with one of the venders and asked if I could try on this bra and somehow it snowballed and before i knew it I was wearing neon green fishnet stockings, a boiler hat and a corset. The Japanese dude was kind enough to feel my breasts while Kiyoko also lent a hand.

At night, Jeffery, Tammy and I made our way to an “onsen” or hotspring by the mountain- as Oita is famous for its onsens. The Onsen was the nicest one I have ever been in and had a huge outdoor area with 5 diffrent pools. We had a good soak then met up with a friend of Jeffery and sang karaoke for the rest of the night. We got home around 2ish and spent a short time looking a fireflies behind his house. Since we don’t have them back home, I’ve never seen them so it was really cool seeing fireflies for the first time.

Sunday was my last day in Oita and after the week in Kobe and the last two in Oita, we all wanted to take it easy, so we went sightseeing. We saw a really nice gorge and visited this mountain temple full of 500 hand carved buddahs. The area definitely has some breathtaking views and Tammy and I really enjoyed traveling around and just seeing some of the sights.

It was a great trip and I’m really glad I made my way down. Jeffery has a pretty nice set up as it schools aren’t packed of students and his area is just breathtaking. One other thing that makes me so envious is that he has an ice rink beside his house. He lives beside one of his schools and this massive town hall and there is actually a skating rink there. How unfair is that, they put an American beside an ice rink.

Well I’m definitely gonna head back down a few more times before I leave and the three of us also made plans to meet next month in Yamaguchi, as Tammy lives 3 minutes from the beach and she pretty much lives in a beach house.

Japanese factoid#25: Kaiten Sushi or also known as revolving sushi. We have a few of these in Richmond, but it’s basically a conveyor belt that has different types of sushi dishes on it. All you do is grab the plate of sushi you want to eat and each plate has a corresponding price to it. At the end, the waitress just counts the number of plates you have and you pay your bill. Jeffery, Tammy and had Kaiten right before we hoped on the train and it was really really affordable and damn good.