After a fully recharging night in the Onsen hotel, we had a beautiful breakfast. Today will be a busy transportation day!
Day 4 of The Big’s & The Bread’s Japan Trip
- Yufuin
- Lake Kinrin
- Walk around Yufuin
- Yunotsubo Kaido (the shopping arcade)
- Kokura
- JR Interchanging day
- Hankyu Ferry
1st Stop：Lake Kinrin
The lake has a number of walking paths around it, and depending on where the sun is and where you are standing the lake has a number of different appearances that you can enjoy. You can also enjoy observing the waterfowl and fish, and when the autumn leaves change color the lake shows a different and even more charming face.
Lake Kinrin is not a big lake with a 400m perimeter only. The name Kinrin means “Golden Fish Scale” as the lake sparkles in golden ray during sunsets.
There is a regular spring and a hot spring beneath. When they throw to the lake and meet, the temperature difference creates a stunning morning mist in the winter. What a creature of the nature. This wondrous scene can only be seen in Sep – Mar every year.
You can have a full walk around the lake with 5-10 mins. Highly recommend you to walk around as you can see different images at different spots.
As the name tells, the sunset view of Lake Kinrin is gorgeous with golden sparkles. Go and visit the lake twice to see both the morning mist and sunset scenes.
It takes you 25 minutes to walk from JR Yufuin Station to Lake Kinrin. Lake Kinrin is nearby our hotel so we can have a morning exercise and walk to the Lake. We went there at 8am and you can enjoy the tranquility during your walk.
The incredible morning mist scene can only see in winter’s mornings. If you would like to take pictures with lesser people, go there by 9am.
Information:
Address: 1561 Yufuinchō Kawakami Yufu-shi, Ōita-ken 879-5102
Website: http://www.visit-oita.jp/spot/spot0012.html
2nd Stop：A walk in Yufuin
We check-out and left our hotel after visiting to Lake Kinrin as today will be a busy transportation day. We have a bit time left, so we decided to walk to the station with our luggage instead of taking taxi like what we did when we come yesterday.
The comfortable weather and the precious tranquility made this a pleasant walk. You will find that Yufuin is larger than expected. The withered plants on the fields added a golden filter to the view.
Indeed, it is a short walk. You can arrive the Yunotsubo Kaido in 5-6 mins. If you walk along the arcade for a 5-6mins more, you get to the JR station. The Bread loves this river. We would walk along if we had sufficient time.
The sunlight sprinkled on the extending mountains. People-less with cottages, houses, golden fields, streams and trails. Minutes of walk from the shopping arcade but the atmosphere is poles apart.
3rd Stop：Yunotsubo Kaido
Yunotsubo Kaido is a shopping arcade. Just like all the arcades in Japan, you will find many souvenir shops and restaurants. As the city centre of Yufuin, Yunotsubo is popular and crowded. When you read through the Yunotsubo guide, many would recommend the rolled-cake in B-Speak. We gave up. First, the small size roll is sold out. The portion of large size is over our appetite. Moreover, mum of The Big tried it just a month before and her comment was: just an ordinary cake roll, so we decided to save our appetite to more attractive food.
“DeeDee “
Black Sugar Soy Milk Soft Serve
Both brown sugar and soy milk are the signature ingredients in Japanese dessert which would never go wrong.
You can hardly find the store on Google Map. So you could find it just next to: “地雞拉麵福助”: Google Map
Tabelog website and information of DeeDee
“ゆふふ Yufufu”
Cheese Pudding and Double layer cheesecake
Another must-try shop is ‘Milch’. If you hate queuing, we would recommend Yufufu. You can have try the creamy and rich milk pudding here serving with caramel. Cheesecake is not as delicious as the pudding as there is no strong texture.
Just a reminder that the review of this resteraunt in google is not great. There were very few customers in the restaurant so we requested to sit at a larger table as we were carrying a lot of stuffs and there were empty seats. The staff was not considerate and commanded us to sit on the smaller table.
It was an even worse experience for the tourist in the other table. The waiters were very rude to them ass day put the luggage near the seats. The waiter expected them to put the luggage is outside the restaurant. This is not the right way for treating tourists who was it the city or Japan for the first time ass not all of them I understand the restaurant rules and manner in Japan.
Restaurant Information
- Address：2-1 Yufuincho Kawakita, Yufu, Oita 879-5114
- Opening Hours：10:00 – 18:00
4th Stop：JR Interchange Station
We are taking the Hankyu Ferry to travel from Kyushu to Osaka. The ferry is a cheaper option than JR railway. Since we are taking our transportation at night, we believe that the ferry is a economic option as we save one night hotel cost as well.
The starting point of the ferry is located in Mojikō. If you managed to have time before taking the ferry, we suggest you to spend some time there as well. For us, we prefer to stay in Yufuin (our last blog post) for longer and take the ferry directly.
Route：
- Yufuin 10:03 departure
- Oita 10:53 arrival ; 11:10 departure
- Kokura 12:41 arrival
- Kokura 16:10 take the shuttle bus arranged by Hankyu Ferry to Pier Mojiko
- Mojiko 17:30 departure of Hankyu Ferry
- Pier Izumiotsu arrival before 06:00
You can use this website for JR schedule：https://roote.ekispert.net/en
5th Stop：Hankyu Ferry
When we arrived the pier, we were able to ooboard the ferry immediately. Even though the ferry is not as luxury as a cruise, there are plenty of things you can explore such as restaurants, promenade, observation deck, gaming area as well as lobby. The most fascinating area would be outdoor hot spring area.
This is a picture from the ferry official website
“Food”
Honestly, the food was good with reasonable price. We ordered
Fried udon on iron plate, beef egg rice bowl and a oden.
For the full version of ferry trip review, please refer to our respective blog post
“The Room”
We have picked the two person room. This is the picture from the official website. The room is very clean and tidy. There were enough space for us to exercise and do HIIT. There is also a private bath room which is good privacy.
“Facilites”
There were not too many facilies on the ferry. Our favourite one is the observatory deck and the outdoor hot spring where you could enjoy amazing sea view. It was Winter at that time. Our upper body were enduring the strong and cold wind from the sea while our lower body are inside a very nice and warm hot spring pool. That awesome feeling is very hard to explain. Plus, there are plenty of stars in the sky when you look upwards. How romantic and peaceful…
Hanky Ferry Information
Fee：Depends on the room type, it cost us 30840 ($2260HKD),
Travel Duration：around 12 Hours
Others：You can bring your pets. There is parking space if you are driving as well.
For more detail information, you can refer to the official website：https://www.han9f.co.jp/tw/
Other Japan Travel Blogs：
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