Japan - Day 64

Another week (or so) has gone by but I don't really have anything exciting to report... I've been working lots and that's about it. On the plus side - I'm officially finished my probationary period - woohoo! LOL, now I can get paid my full amount. Bonus.

Today was mine and Amy's mutual day off, the day where we usually venture out and try to take in some of the local sights. Naturally, of course, it was raining. (If you look back over some of my pictures you'll notice the common theme of an umbrella in hand). We were originally going to take a cable car up the mountain in Beppu to get a nice overlook of the city, but judging by the amount of fog there was we decided not to waste our money. Instead, we decided to go see some of the hotsprings along the "Jigoku Meduri" or the "Hell Tour". These hotsprings, or "hellsprings" rather, are so hot that people are not allowed to go in the water - hence the "hell" aspect. The water temperature was between 90 and 98 degrees Celsius as far as I could understand, maybe hotter. But still pretty damn hot!

There are 8 of these Jigoku along the tour route but we only made it to two of them today. We decided to save some of the others for future entertainment. (And hopefully for a day without rain). Today we managed to see the Umi-Jigoku and the Yama-Jigoku. The water of the first one is a brilliant cobalt blue - difficult to see through all the steam though. The water's hot enough that they can hard-boil eggs in it. At the latter hellsrping isn't overly spectacular, but the site doubles as a mini-zoo. They have a hippo, an elephant, some monkeys and baboons, and a bunch of random birds. The brochure claimed that they also had "prancing lions" but we didn't see any. ...Much like how we didn't see any of the mystery sea otters at our trip to the aquarium last week.

...Last week Amy and I visited the local aquarium called Umitamago (don't judge us). We saw a lot of sea creatures native to this area in Japan. (Note to self: Do not go swimming in the ocean). As well as some seals, dolphins, and walruses. They claimed to have some sea otters which I was really excited about (they're so cute!!!) but we couldn't find any :( We tried asking one of the employees but that didn't really amount to much.

Anyway, the hellsprings were pretty cool to go see, and I think we'll go back to see some of the remaining six later on. They have one called the "Oniishi Shaven Head Hell" because it's a boiling mud bath where the bubbles look like the top of monks' heads, and another one called the "Blood Hell" because the clay of the pool makes the water look red... There was a mini red hellspring at the Umi-Jigoku site too. And there was one hotspring that people could actually use at the Umi-Jigoku site as well. It was a foot bath of sorts - so nice! The sign for it was kinda funny though - you'd think that in a touristy area they'd double check their English translations - apparently not. Instead of writing "foot bath" or something similar they called it "hot spring of a leg". Okay, maybe that's not amusing to all, but it's amusing to me nonetheless.

Alright, well since Thursday is the new Sunday I have another full week of work to look forward to starting tomorrow. I never thought I'd ever say I love Mondays, but I guess now I do.