86: Hotel Sansenkaku & 87: Hotel Seifu

It was a busy day today. We went down to Oita today to be on the radio again. This time my harmonica jam with the radio announcer was broadcast all over Oita Prefecture, well, at least to whoever was listening to AM radio between 11:00 and 11:50. It was fun. Then I took the family to lunch at a famous Beppu restaurant. It is famous for it's hibachi grills (the smoke from which fills the entire place so its like having a nice leisurely meal in a burning building).

So after lunch I took Jude out to do 2 onsen.

Hotel Sansenkaku
After several attempts at timing our trips to meet the 2 hour window for bath-only patrons, we finally got to use our free ticket for Sansenkaku.
The bath is up on the 9th floor so you can see all of Beppu's main drag, Route 10. The showers are right next to the windows so you can experience hot water and vertigo at the same time.
Jude enjoyed the showers and the bath was nice, to boot.

Hotel Seifu
We next made our way to Hotel Seifu. This hotel is famous for its staff that can do magic (I knew I'd forget to ask them!) We went into the outdoor bath today on the roof (8th floor). It had started to rain pretty hard today so we got to sit in the tub and get pounded with rain while staring at the ocean. Pretty cool. Jude got into a (hot) water pistol fight with another boy and they were having a good old time.


Oita is now gettin the mad rain that Kagoshima got yesterday. Kagoshima recorded over 1200 ml of rain in 4 days. Landslides and all kinds of mess. Everyone we know is OK, but I hope this passes. Rainy season doesn't want to end this year.

Tomorrow night, we will splurge on the biggest onsen water park in Beppu, Suginoi Palace, to mark out ascent to hot spring mastery. We might even get in the newspaper thanks to my hotel owner friend.