My two days in Hakata (and my
last in Japan, sob!) were a whirlwind
of activity. I still had so much to do and so little time, but believe it or
not, I accomplished all of it…and infinitely more!
Let us first set the scene. I
raved about my last Hakata hostel, but this time I need to rant. Heavily. Like,
I would raze that building to the ground if I could just have found an
available bulldozer. They’re all over the place except when you need one like
the police or that other sock. No, this place was pretty awful by hostel
standards. And considering their rise in popularity over the last decade, this
place has got a lot to prove. I’m talking about International Khaosan Fukuoka.
I love the Khaosan annexes. I’ve stayed in a few and have not been disappointed…until
this last trip to Hakata.
First, there are two hostels of
the same name in Hakata. I went to the one northwest of the Hakata station and
was told I had to walk 20 minutes in the opposite direction. Peachy. Well fine,
it was cloudy and windy so I wasn’t working up a terrible sweat, and I needed
the leg work after riding trains all day from Sasebo.
I finally found the hostel and was
met with a cheery enough host who gave me the run down and told me there would
be a hanami part in a nearby park. The sakura had just peaked, so everyone all
over Fukuoka was going ballistic for the blossoms. I’ll say this: one of the
iconic images I’ll cherish of Japan is strolling through a park in spring and
seeing grown men in three piece suits having a picnic and getting rip-roaring
drunk under a cascade of pink petals.
So the hanami party was nice. I
got there late so all the food was gone. But no matter. We chatted, I met a guy
named Nam who sells chocolate and knows people in France I can connect with
later, and I got a few good pictures of the trees. So, success.
But the night is dark and full of
god awful terrors.
I discovered a few unsavory
things:
1. The staff doesn’t know how to clean.
2. The guests don’t know how to
clean.
3. There are some pretty funky freaking smells out there and I never
want to know the source of some of them.
The rooms were musty and after one
fella cooked on his and my first night there, the kitchen had a really gross,
rotten smell that only worsened over the next few days. All the towels and
sponges in the kitchen were perpetually soggy or grimy. People stayed up all
night in the common room and left the place trashed in the morning. Everything
felt sticky.
And my roommates.
Three men and one woman does not
a happy gathering make, especially when one man goes to bed at 9pm and the
other two snore. I don’t mean heavy breathing. I mean I thought one was just
screaming in a bass tone all night and the other one, well a few times he very
nearly died, I think. He may have had apnea.
Basically, I didn’t sleep well.
But I made up for it on Wednesday. I woke to some pretty nasty weather. Drizzly
rain, windy and just not as gorgeous as it had been for my whole trip. I know,
I’m spoiled rotten. So I decided, since the museum I was going to see was
actually closed, I figured I’d go on an adventure to Japan’s onsen capital,
Beppu!
You know the monkeys that sit in
the hot, volcanic waters? Yeah, around there. It’s on the opposite side of
Kyushu’s northern part, so I had to take either the train or the bus. The train
was much more expensive so I decided to try the bus system.
Another issue with this hostel:
they advertise everywhere guests can get discount tickets to Beppu “at
reception.” No luck at the front desk. Instead, I was uselessly told to go to
the station and buy tickets. Easy, right? Wrong. It’s not a direct drive from
Hakata to Beppu. I found out through asking other travelers that I had to go to
the airport first! Oh, why travelers?
Because the information reception where I could have gotten the discount ticket
(maybe, I highly doubt it) didn’t open until 9am!
So I made it to the airport just
in time to dash to a ticket counter, pay for a nonstop bus to Beppu and make it
out to the bus stand as the thing pulled in! Yikes! But at least I had 2 ½ hours
to nap.
Beppu is an old, old, old, old
town and deserves all the business it gets! It’s absolutely mobbed with
tourists and local onsen lovers. Every hotel has an onsen and most hotels use
the naturally occurring geothermal waters that Beppu was built on. Up in the
mountains, you just need to look for flags or steam bubbling up from the
ground. Down by the shore, it’s a little trickier. While there are over 100
onsen in town, some are hard to find.
There’s a warm hand onsen outside
the station and around town there are little springs where you can wash your
hands or bathe your feet. But personally, I recommend Takegawara Onsen: one of
the oldest in Beppu. It features a sand onsen where you wear a yukata and are
buried in warm sand for about 10 minutes. It also has a free public bath. Free,
I tell you! What’s more, after you bathe, you can rest in the hall with a cool
drink and look at the old photographs of the onsen in its hey-day.
It seriously looks like something
out of “Spirited Away.” I was enchanted, certainly,…until I left and happened
to look into the wide open street level windows of the men’s onsen and got an
eyeful of naked man meat.
You get what you pay for: in this
case, a free bath and peep show.
Sated on walking the town,
picking up seashells and seeing…the sights…I went back to the bus stop and got
a return ticket. I got back to Hakata by early evening and wandered the massive
underground stores at the train station for dinner, nibbling the freebies.
Still feeling a bit genki, I took a stroll around town to get some evening
pictures of the town…hence the absence of pictures this time around. I promise,
when I’m settled in Amsterdam, I’ll deliver the goods. I grabbed a late bento
at the famed “everything store,” Don Quixote and heading “home” to the mildew
and snoring.
My last day was still ahead of me,
so I needed all the rest I could manage.
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