New Friends, Hot Springs, and Onsens in Beppu

Yesterday while I was in the Lobby I met a guy named Tony Sun. Tony is from Orange county and had recently quit his job to travel the world. Tony has traveled for the past 4 months all around Asia. He has been to Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam and now Japan (I am sure I am forgetting some of the other countries he has been). I asked him how long he plans to travel. He said he thinks it will probably take him about a year and a half to go all the places he wants to go. Tony inspired me because of his story. Tony had a good job back in the states. He has his MBA. He is 31 years old. He told me that he found himself getting a feeling in his gut this year that said "isn't there more out there then just this." He made the decision to quit his job and to travel.

Today Tony and I went to Kanawa (a nearby town of Beppu) and explored their hotsprings. The hotsprings are called "Jigokus". The translation of Jigoku is hell. They are called this because of their heat and color. We saw two hells. They were awesome to look at. One of them was a light sea blue. The other one was a deep red. The cool thing about these is that they are completely natural. The coloring occurs due to different chemical compositions of the ground and the water. Each Jigoku has it's own story. There are 8 different Jigokus but we only had time to see two of them. One of the really fun things was trying to find the Jigokus. They were fairly far apart from each other so we walked around the town quite a bit. This is a very small town and it was really interesting to see the town.

Tony and me in front of a jigoku

Me in front of a jigoku


This is a view of Kannawa

Of course after we went to the Jigokus we went to an Onsen. The onsen had 6 different types of baths. It had indoor onsens and outdoor onsens. The outdoor onsen was awesome. At one point it began to rain a little bit while I was sitting in the outside onsen. I love sitting outside in a warm onsen when it is raining… Yes I'm addicted.