Beppu (part 1)

Alright, lets continue with the Beppu pictures.  Just in case you are wondering (oh yes you are, aren't you?), while writing this, I am listening (on repeat) to T-ara's (kpop group - pronounced "Tiara") digital single called "Why are you like this?".  Good song and the video is pretty funny - youtube it.

The reason why I went to Beppu is to attend the AROB Conference which has been held in Japan for the past 16 years - mostly in Beppu:

First of all, to get some idea of where Beppu is situated in Japan, here is a car route map.  Google says 680km by car from Nagoya - about 11 hours.  For Canadian standards, that is rather close ;P.

We all flew there so the flight took around 1hr and cost around $350.  ANA was our plane choice - the plane was a Canadian Dash 8!  The airport experience was like nothing I experienced before.  First of all, I'm not sure why, but the airport was rather dead overall - maybe a bad time for flights but for a major airport that was a bit strange.  The whole checking in/security/etc process was so nice, pleasant, and quick - totally the opposite of flying to the USA.

We landed on the Oita Airport which is about 40km away from Beppu (and about 50km from Oita city).

 A map of the Oita prefecture.  Beppu is roughly in the middle by the water.

We then took a bus from the Oita Airport to Beppu.  It took roughly 40 minutes.  Quite comfy.  The route was quite interesting but it was dark so couldn't see that much.  There was a highway for a while but mostly a road near the water.

Beppu is situated (like many Japanese coastal towns) between mountains and the ocean.  So it looks quite nice.  Here is a rough map of the train system:

 Hmm... shinkansen advertisement!

That day we basically got our hotel rooms then met up later to go for dinner (see the food post).  The main street in the town looked quite nice in the dark.

 Side streets looked like this:

TV tower and some buildings... I think this is the intersection of 2 main streets in town.

 I found a really old looking onsen building:

 The entrance:

 There was quite a large covered shopping street or few with many shops:

 A pachinko/slot place - those seem to be everywhere in Japan:

Beppu is totally a tourist town - why you might ask... well it is a famous place for onsen - Japanese hot springs.  Here is one example - a bubbling hot spring fountain situated in front of the Beppu train station:

 A video of it:

Here is the train station:

More of the train station - with actual train.  The tracks were on the second level - I could actually see people waiting for their trains from my hotel room.

 Japanese police station by the train station:

In front of the train station was this interesting statue:

View from the train station to the main road - our hotel is the tall one on the right says: "station hotel" - 「ステーションホテル」:

A more centered look on the main street:

A side street:

This is the entrance to the hotel - very nice hotel and quite reasonable prices - about $50 per night.

By the hotel entrance was an onsen hand bath:

A side road:

Another onsen fountain somewhere on a side street:

Can see the mountains in the back:

An onsen building in town:

 A mushroom store along the way to the conference venue:

To get to the conference venue from the hotel, you had to cross a large park.

 The park was really nice with a nice selection of well taken care of trees:

 Nobody seemed to know what the things on the tree trunks were for:

 The flowering trees are ume tree - Japanese apricot.  The trees normally flower in late January before the leaves appear.  The fruit is well known in Japan to make umeboshi - specially pickled ume fruit.

 Some flowers were still growing:

 Now that is one dense tree:

  The trees were pruned nicely - looked like giant bonsai:

 There was also a nice bamboo forest - very lightly coloured green leaves:

 Nice view of the bamboo forest with a mountain in the background.

 That is the largest rose tree I have seen yet - you can see these rose bushes all over Nagoya but this tree was impressive:

Nice view of a large mountain:

 The conference was held at the Beppu Convention Center which had a large observation tower:

 So naturally, we went up to see - the views were spectacular:

 The park and main part of town.  In the distance you see the monkey island (with actual monkeys - no, I sadly didn't go see them - next time) and in the back is Oita.

 Top of the convention center:

 The moutain side:

 We were wondering what this "you me" was and the next day I went to see it.  Turned out to be a shopping mall - maybe the biggest in Beppu?  Quite big - I got to use one of the bank machines to get money to pay for my hotel room.

 Inside the convention center was a strangely shaped theater:

 Just outside of the center: