Craters and an onsen

Aso Nakadake Crater

The hotel room came with an awesome buffet breakfast of hot and cold items.  Of particular note was the tempura beef slices and a yuzu jelly.

I had planned for a departure at 0900 but we managed to push off at 0830 driving to Aso Nakadake Crater as our first stop.  The drive took about 1h45 before we got to a horrendously wind-swept carpark beside the craters.

On Google Maps, the site was shown with a series of numbered craters.  Here, there appeared to be two main areas.  We looked at both with slight disinterest as it was very cold with the strong winds.

The craters were filled with flat beds of ash in some areas.  Steam and cloud obscured some other areas but I could see spots of yellow sulphur.

After about 30 mins, we retreated to the visitor centre for a short rest away from the cold winds before continuing our day.

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Daikanbo Lookout

Leaving Mount Aso, we passed through Aso town where we saw a lone ginko tree rich with yellow leaves still on, but also with a large patch of freshly fallen yellow leaves.  It was the perfect photo opportunity!

We then continued to Daikanbo viewpoint, some 30 mins from the craters, where we had a viewpoint of Aso’s five peaks around the large caldera that’s now a fertile plain.

The area closest to the viewpoint was covered with fall colours from a bamboo-like grass.  We took a simple noodle lunch and wandered around the gift shop to see horse meat sashimi on sale.

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Kurokawa onsen

It was only about 30 mins drive to the Kurokawa onsen area.  I know little about onsens and had asked Alice to pick one from various online articles.

She randomly picked Yamamizuki which also had a ryokan.  Arriving at 1330, we paid a very reasonable JPY500 for entry to the onsen and a further JPY300 for a small towel.

It was a gorgeous outdoor natural pool (with an artificial base) set next a stream with a pretty waterfall.  The pool was a bit too hot but I did adjust to it.  I needed a break in between and sneakily took some photos (prohibited) before taking a second dip.

I had had more than enough when we reconvened at 1445 for the drive back to Fukuoka.

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Back in Fukuoka

The 2h30 drive back to Fukuoka took a little longer due to rush hour traffic.  This trip, we had largely used the car’s built-in sat-nav.  It was excellent except that it was cumbersome to input addresses.  One needs to enter it strictly by prefecture, district, municipality, etc.

As it was only a short drive from the petrol station to Orix to return the car, we used Google Maps instead.  Unfortunately, it didn’t give the best directions when it came to certain turns which weren’t safe to perform.

The car return was probably the most stressful part of the drive.  To add to that, Alice had found that our hotel was just next to the petrol station and had gone in search of it while I had stationed myself illegally.

After returning the car about an hour ahead of their closing time, we walked to our hotel.  It was the same one that Alice had found but as it was located upstairs and unmanned, there was an element of doubt and she had decided to stick together with me.

We had some trouble checking-in by ourselves as our pre-payment hadn’t been correctly processed.  Once that was sorted with a video-call it was pretty straight forward.

This turned out to be our cheapest hotel this trip and the room was slightly more spacious.

Alice took me to a yakitori bar for dinner.  The accompaniment here is cut cabbage slabs, which I love.  The flame-grilled rice triangles were delicious too.

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After dinner, she introduced me to a store called Don Quixote (referred to as Donkey) which sold just about anything and everything.  However, prices weren’t always good.  Nothing beats Daiso!

We walked back to our hotel, getting there around 2200.  It a late night for us, after another long day.