Kobe

The great thing about the Japan Rail Pass is that you have full use of the JR system and can travel with or without reservations on most shinkansen trains. The allowed us to make a few last minute plans. About halfway through our day in Osaka we decided to hop on a shinkansen and travel (only!) 15 minutes to Kobe and spend the rest of the afternoon exploring that city. Here are some of the pictures we took on our day trip.


Kobe Tower


View from Kobe Tower


Chinatown


Ikuta Inja Shrine

Osaka: Part 1

The next stop on our trip was Osaka.

We visited Osaka Castle.












View from Osaka Castle

We then decided to hop on a train and head to Kobe for a few hours (pics in another post) before returning to Osaka that evening and visiting the Umeda Sky Building, which was just incredible at night!


A model of the building


Looking up at the observatory from the ground


View from a distance

From the observatory we enjoyed some incredible views of a rainy night in Osaka.

Beppu

We then visited Beppu, which is located on the northeast coast of Kyushu. We visited two of the "hells" while we were there. The first "hell" we visited was Umi Jigoku. Before seeing the main hot spring attraction, we passed a beautful pond with lilypads and huge lotus leaves, the likes of which I had never before seen. We then reached the main attraction, which was a bit difficult photograph because of all of the steam.













We visited a second "hell." This one was called Oniishibouzu Jigoku.





We splurged and spent the night in a Japanese ryokan and enjoyed dinner in our room.





The next morning we visited a nearby monkey park.

Sakurajima

We took a ferry across the bay from Kagoshima to Sakurajima volcano and took a tour around the lower area of the volcano.



Before our tour began we had a little time to go exploring. Doc checked out some of the lava formations and I relaxed in a foot onsen along the bay.





We then joined our tour to get a closer look at the volcano.


View of Kagoshima from about half way up the mountain

Kagoshima

We continued our journey and traveled to southern Kyushu and the city of Kagoshima. We spent the majority of our time across the bay checking out Sakurajima, a volcano that spews ash on a regular basis. I'll devote a separate post to the volcano. In Kagoshima we had some great meals, including this one with a table grill.



The restaurant was located in a mall with a ferris wheel!



We also had a great view of the bay and of Sakurajima from our hotel.

Dazaifu

On the outskirts of Fukuoka is a small city called Dazaifu, which is home to some beautiful temples and shrines as well as some tasty rice cakes.

We visited Komyozenji Temple, ...



... Tenmangu Shrine, ...







... Konzeonji Temple, ...





and enjoyed some rice cakes!