Kyushyu Mini-Holiday Part 3 - Samurai Village, Ryokan, and some very large eels indeed

I woke up this morning to the thought, "Today is the day I didn't lose $900." The day was already better. My bruise had turned an interesting shade of green, while keeping its purple highlights.

We left the hotel and grabbed breakfast at a nearby Starbucks. I had a crazy delicious coffee and hot sandwich thing filled with cheeeese. It was a good morning already! Zara mentioned that she felt optimistic about the day, and I couldn't disagree with her crazy-smiley face. She is definitely a morning person.

On this day we saw many beautiful sites. One included a place that said "World famous Eels!" It was just a little hut by a dock full of eel tanks. Granted, the eels were quite large. We then drove through the mountains to a place that has a name, which I cannot remmeber. We also stopped off at a little themed area called "Samurai Residences", which was a little area with some old houses and gardens in a beautiful area of some random valley.

After that, HUNGER came! We looked for kurabuta ramen (a specialty of the area made with a special kind of black pig), but it was 3pm and we found nothing but Hokahoka bento (a chain of made to order bento places) and scarfed down decently delicious bentos. Afterwards we went to a really cool onsen to be buried in warm, semi-volcanic sand and follow it up with a traditional onsen. Zara was privy to see my amazing technicolour bruise, and complimeted it.

Afterwards we found our ryokan (traditional Japanese overnight stay house) and hung out watching bad TV while I played some video games! We then ate way too many courses of yummyish food and soaked in the little onsen for an hour or so. It was nice girl-talk time, and I had forgotten my woes and was actually enjoying myself properly.

As it was Christmas eve, we hunkered down and watched the "Happy Christmas Show!" on TV. They had a bunch of terrible Japanese singers and Enya! Weird! It was fabulously bad and all of the narration was in English for no apparent reason. It was also nice being in a place for the evening that was not really really cold. I appreciated that aspect of this Southern area of Japan quite a bit.