On the way to my next stop, Beppu, which I wasn’t expecting much from, there turned out to be a cluster of famous hot-spring villages. The schedule was so rushed that I hadn’t had a proper lunch, so I figured I’d at least grab a meal and headed into Kurokawa Onsen.
Soba
I was really craving soba that day, so I asked at the information center if there was a soba place, and they said there was exactly one. I usually skip suspicious-looking places like this, but there was nowhere else worth going, and since it was a little past 3 o’clock, a lot of places had already closed for lunch, so I had no choice. So I ordered some, and the taste wasn’t bad, but the price… OTL. Well… if it had tasted bad I’d have been furious, but it didn’t, so I just let it go. I asked whether it was the Oguni soba this area is famous for, and they said no. Hunting down soba shops in the countryside is kind of fun, but this time I was underprepared (sob) and couldn’t make it to one. I had no idea how much time I’d end up spending at Aso, you see. Now that I’ve been once, I should be able to prepare much better next time.
Stir-fried chicken, probably from Kagoshima
This one really was very ordinary. The chicken was fresh, but it came out greasy and salty, cooked as a drinking snack. Also, coming all the way to Kumamoto and eating another prefecture’s food instead of the local stuff wasn’t great either. Two plates like this came to a little over 2,000 yen… (sob) Oh well… I’ll just call it my parking fee.
I take a quick lap around the hot-spring streets. It’s nicer than I expected, and well equipped for foreign visitors too. Of course, you really have to get into the baths and taste the food at the ryokan before you can properly judge an onsen.
Flowers
Really well kept…
Rice seedlings
Koinobori at an onsen ryokan
Decorations that pray for boys to grow up healthy and live long
There was even a flower bed like this…
Overflowing with tourists…
Quite a few souvenir shops and cafés too…
There’s a hill too.
It even felt a little like being in Kyoto. It felt like a theme park that makes good use of a traditional Japanese streetscape.
Bijin-no-yu, the “beauty bath”
It seems they call hot springs that are good for your skin “beauty baths”… but unless you live here your whole life, I doubt it does much.
A small bathhouse
A café with a stylish interior
Koinobori close-up
Ashiyu, a foot bath
Maybe because it was free, it was lukewarm…
Onsen tamago, hot-spring eggs
About 50 yen apiece, but incredibly tasty. Maybe because they soak up plenty of minerals from the spring, they had a complex flavor. Well… I’m sure not every onsen egg in the world is delicious. The eggs themselves seemed to be really good ones, too.
After wandering around like this, I move straight on to the next stop. I’d like to come back to Kurokawa Onsen someday with friends or a partner.