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:

Apartment and Paper

A quick update.  I might have found an apartment - basically preliminary papers are signed awaiting final approval and such.  Very good location (next to a big subway station), 3km from school, 3km to downtown, 11th floor.  The room is quite tiny but what is really good are the windows - together there are 3 windows in the place plus the balcony doors - very bright!  Keeping my fingers crossed.

Also, I was cleaning up my papers at home and came upon these strange fat short pieces of paper and started to wonder what the heck they were... turned out to be Letter sized paper from Canada ;P.  I got so used to the A4 size here that those seemed totally out of place... strange!

And since a post has to have some pictures...
here is a quiz:  what do these 3 items have in common?

... answer will come after at least a few guesses... come on!
Hint: It is not about food but has something to do with chance.

Beppu - Food

Last week I was in Beppu (Ooita Prefecture) for the AROB 2011 Symposium.  The trip was very enjoyable and the conference was quite interesting and quite unique compared to other international conferences.  I took tons of pictures so will have to split it all into separate blog posts.

Lets start with the food.  6 people from our lab went to this conference, so we always ate together.  Thus, it was an excellent experience of trying new things!!!  First off, right after arriving in Beppu and checking in at the hotel, we went to eat dinner (quite late as it was already around 9pm). We basically went to a standard Japanese drink/food place but to me it was quite exciting since I've only been to one a few times.  For the food, a whole bunch of smaller dishes were ordered to share plus some beer of course.

We walked along this small street that had tons of restaurants.

 Finally settled on this awesome one.  I'm slowly getting used to sitting on tatami... but I still can't sit for too long.

Dipping sauce for something... there were too many dipping sauces to remember ;P.  And some mustard.

 Nice sashimi of some local fish and some mushrooms in the back.

 This tempura chicken is supposed to be a local specialty and it tasted wonderful!

 Gyoza!

 Here you see an assortment of dipping sauces.

 Octopus sashimi:

 Some tasty fried fish (quite bony but tasty):

 Fried chicken:

 A meal like this is typically ended with some kind of rice dish... so we got some onigiri and miso soup.

 More onigiri:

 I gotta say that I loved the miso soup over there - it was totally different tasting than the one in Nagoya.  Much sweeter tasting white miso.

 The table after we finished.

Next up is a belt sushi restaurant that was very close to the conference venue and we went there twice.  Here it is on the left:

 The name:

 Inside it looked like this:

 We got some delicious miso soup with clams inside:

 Lots of clams.... this is only from my bowl:

 And sushi kept coming...

 I gotta say that it was quite tasty.

 We kept basically ordering from the menu (well... I just said I'll eat anything so I wasn't involved in the selection process).

 Mackerel on the right and squids in front.

 Shrimps:

 Now, this is interesting.  I had it before but I thought it's some veggie.  But see the black dots?  Those are eyes!  Basically it's some small Japanese eel like fish that grows to about that size.  Awesome!

The light fixtures were interesting since the box was wood and the white stuff was paper - very Japanese:

 For dessert a very tasty tofu kinda dessert but more like pudding... with some jam:

For the next day's dinner, 4 of us went to a yakiniku place which is the Japanese equivalent of a Korean BBQ.  My first time to yakiniku so I was very excited!  Each table had this huge venting over the grill.

 This was the menu.  Luckily I was with people that could read it ;P.  We basically got an unlimited food / unlimited drink deal for around $40/person.

First things placed on the table were these things.  Which were some kind of potato like bulb - tasted pretty ok.

 And some awesome smelling dipping sauce:

 The platter of raw meat arrived.  What was interesting is that there were different cuts of meat in there and each tasted very different.  Plus beers!

 The grilling began...

 Shrimp and veggies for the grilling:

 Grilling in full force:

 So good!!!  Incredible taste.

 We also got some octopus sashimi.  I'm not too crazy for the texture of those, but it was ok.

 Good good fire.

 Group picture time!

 Shrimp go on the grill.  It's very much like a BBQ... gotta be careful to balance between undercooking and burning.

 The front of the restaurant.

 And the name:

At the hotel we were staying at, breakfast was included.  I selected Japanese breakfast twice:

 And western breakfast once.  It was kinda western looking but the combination of things wasn't very western.  Plus the ketchup didn't taste like ketchup! ;P

Finally, after arriving back in Nagoya from the airport (which took about 1 hr by train from the airport), we went to a ramen shop near a big train/subway station Kanayama.  It was around 10pm.  This place specialized in ramen (ラーメン) and tsukemen (つけ麺) which is basically noodles with a dipping sauce.

 Name of the place Kanayama 55 (カナヤマ):

 I have not tried tsukemen yet so I ordered it.  It was so delicious!!!

Okie, that's enough for the Beppu food post.  I got a bit hungry by looking at these pictures... good tasty memories.