Not having anything particularly pressing to do today, I decided to head down the mountain into town and hoof it through the west side of town. I only had two destinations in mind, Beppu Koen (park) and Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing chain.

Upon arrival at APU I was issued a semi-crappy map which was today’s key to the city. The map is useful in that it shows all the bus routes through town, and yet at the same time it is most definitely crappy in that whoever made it wholly arbitrarily decided what landmarks to notate on the map. Useful + Definitely Crappy = Semi-crappy! So, I had brought my semi-crappy map along, for as you well know by now Japan doesn’t bother with naming any small roads, and at this point I consulted it. My first primary destination west of Beppu-eki was the Koen, but I had some walking to do before I got there so I looked on the map for some interesting places to check out on the way. After all, any traveler can tell you that often the journey is more interesting than the destination and today was no exception.

On said map I spied a Christian Church. Now if you’re unfamiliar with the history of Christianity in Japan I haven’t the time to catch you up to speed. You could try Wikipedia in a pinch. Suffice to say less than 1% of Japanese are Christian, and after centuries of oppression and isolation during the Tokugawa era it’s become a sort of bastardized subset of modern Christianity. Without guidance from the western seats of Christian power, the locals understandably wandered a bit in their worship and the final product was sort of Christian, sort of something else. Last I checked the Vatican disavowed it entirely, which is a shame. But back to the story at hand, I spied a Christian church, a rare sight indeed in a town as small as Beppu(125K) and headed that way.

Before I got there however I ran into a very different bit of religious iconography.

Speaking from experience, this is a ceremonial float used in a festival parade celebrating fertility. If the size of the nose doesn’t ring a bell, maybe the back will…

It’s times like these I think about Puritanical America and I just have to laugh. Could you imagine what would happen if this float was entered in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade? People everywhere would grab pitchforks and torches, assuming they hadn’t already died of a heart attack. And yet at the same time here in Japan it’s a perfectly acceptable thing. In the wise words of one of my Japanese friends: “we all have the same parts right?”

On to the church. Once I finally arrived I was disappointed to discover that there wasn’t much to it.

Furthermore, I was unable to enter because they were closed. I think you’d agree that the interiors of churches always say the most about them, and I’ve never been inside a Japanese Christian church. The church did have a play area and what looked like classrooms around back.

It’s obvious that they aren’t raking in the tithes, but at least they’re making a stubborn go of it. Religious diversity is never a bad thing.

Adjacent to the church was a local meeting hall, out front of which was this statue that I found both beautiful and unexpected.

The black plaque at the bottom reads “Statue of a Nude Woman” and then the sculptor’s name. Thanks for the info, duh. Immediately across the street was located this architectural silliness.

This is what happens when a city modernizes their buildings without modernizing their lots sizes. Trying to cram an apartment building onto the footprint of a classic Japanese house is just goofy. It’s about 10 stories tall and maybe 30m wide.

After that block I headed to the park and after a bit of a hike caught my first sight of the grounds.

Forest sure contrasts strongly against urban blight. I walked around the walls until I reached the entrance, then paused for this picture.

I never get tired of seeing those mountains in the background. Feeling thirsty I headed over to the nearest water fountain, gave the handle a nice hard twist – and promptly shot myself right in the face with a huge stream of water. The half dozen or so high school girls who had been sitting on benches around the fountain had a good laugh at my expense. That stupid fountain honestly had enough pressure to shoot water at least 6 feet out of the nozzle straight up. One must use a delicate touch it seems. I’m pretty sure those girls sit there after school every day smoking cigarettes just waiting for something like that to happen to someone like me.

The park was pleasant. I especially enjoyed this beautiful grove of Take(bamboo) and the winding path therein.

There’s always more to Japanese landscaping than meets the eye, a fact that I think many tourists completely miss. Take this picture for instance:

You can see a gently trimmed shrub or two in the middle-back, but that’s not the only object in the scene that was placed premeditatedly. See those two boulders on the right, one of which is almost wholly embedded and the other is resting gently? Those were not originally there. Landscaping in Japan is an artful game in which the goal is to create a natural scene with so much skill that the viewer is completely unaware that it was wholly generated at the hands of man. This is not a particularly good example of the practice, but it get’s the point across. With that I headed west once again and exited the other side of the park, pausing only to look briefly back at the grounds before I headed on towards Uniqlo.

On the way there I was shocked to run across a bit of foreign fare. McDonald’s is inescapable anywhere on the planet these days, but more cultured exotic dining options are hard to come by in such a small city.

My next stop was Beppu Tower, built adjacent to the grounds of B-Con Plaza, Beppu’s state-of-the-art convention venue.

I learned today while at the tower that Beppu prides itself as being not only a hot spring resort destination, but a premiere convention location for groups from all over the Western Pacific. For 300yen I was able to purchase a ticket to 105m of vertigo.

Looking for miles in every direction, the view from the tower was truly awesome.

Did you see APU in that panorama? Remember, it’s way up on a high hill overlooking town. Here’s some help, you can see it in this picture.

Still no luck? Look again…

Insane asylum on the hill, what? For the engineers among you a building that high is a pretty serious wind obstruction in a typhoon prone area isn’t it? Not to mention they do occasionally have earthquakes here. To guard against both these eventualities, the top of the tower was equipped with this awesome sway counterweight to dampen motion.

All modern skyscrapers in Japan have them, this I learned on the Discovery Channel, but they’re rarely viewable by the public.

After the tower I headed to Uniqlo and did some shopping, then faced a long northward trek through town to intersect the closest bus line headed back home. By this time it was getting on towards 6pm and my only serious meal of the day was breakfast just past noon(ha!), so I was on the prowl for some chow. As I walked through town, I discovered my first Japanese knickpoint.

Just kidding. I could write pages about Japan’s relationship with its environs, and will someday, but for now I need to collect more pictures on the subject. I reached the bus route before I had seen any restaurants, and since the only food waiting for me back at APU was a cup of ramen, I endeavored to walk along the bus route until I found someplace to eat. I passed several bus stops but eventually came across a tiny little Takoyaki shop.

I can find no American equivalent to a place like this.

They typically seat no more than 3 people at a tiny bar, and the owner/proprietor/chef/bartender prepares your food right in front of you. I sat down and immediately struck up an animated conversation with my new friend as he opened me a 1.5L bottle of Kirin Ichiban and poured me a glass. We agreed on yakisoba for dinner, a delicious Japanese dish involving noodles, pork slices, octopus tentacles, and various veggies served hot with a sweet sauce. My description cannot possibly do it justice. For the next 90min as he cooked, and then as I ate, and then for a long while after I was done, we shot the breeze about all manner of things. In the end I thanked him profusely for the excellent meal and friendly conversation, he thanked me profusely for my patronage, I snagged a photo for the memories, and I left to catch the bus.

I fully intend to become a regular patron, perhaps a bi-monthly visitor. He makes some damn tasty yakisoba, and there’s definite mutual enjoyment of the other’s company. Oh, and don’t think for a second that he’s that tall. I’ve got my knees bent AND I’m leaning over…

In the end, it was a great afternoon on the town. If you’ve made it through this entire journal post in one sitting you deserve some sort of prize. Don’t expect ’em all to be this long!