After our time in Fukuoka, we headed to Oita prefecture to relax and enjoy some onsen.
In Oita, we visited the famous Hell Onsens. They are natural onsens that occured after a volcano erruption, but the water is far too hot to bathe in: they are just for looking at. This particular hell, Umi Jigoku, is named so because the colour is so blue it looks like the sea.
It was great to see, but super stinky. The sulfurous smelling gas kept on blowing on us, but it was worth a trip whilst being there.
There was another brown one, which didn't look quite so pretty...
Afterwards, to relax, we visited a special onsen. We basically got put in an oven with leaves, to steam. You have to enter the onsen, put on a yukata, enter through a tiny hobbit door to a 90degree boiling hot tiny room, lie down on top of leaves and sweat everything out for 8 minutes. Needless to say, it was terrifying. It was so hot and being in there alone (men and women are separate) I began to get so claustrophobic I thought I might get locked in and die! A great experience, but something I'm sure I'll never do again.
That night, we stayed with a CouchSurfer! It was a great experience! We stayed with a girl from Vietnam who is living and studying in Beppu. She was so kind, gave us bed to sleep in, and her friends all cooked an amazing Vietnamese meal for us. A great experience.
The next morning - to Yufuin! It is a really cute tourist spot in Japan.
See that tiny building with the thatched roof? That was an onsen we visited. It was so small and traditional - you placed your entrance money in a box outside before entering. And, it was the first mixed onsen we have been too! So, men and women together. It felt like a true Japanese experience.
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