EXPERIENCING TRADITIONAL ONSEN AND MORE
06.01.2025
We had a very relaxing time at one of Saga’s best hot spring resorts, Ureshino Onsen. It is a hot spring town in southwestern Saga Prefecture. Its clear onsen waters are high in sodium bicarbonate and sodium chloride and feel extremely smooth on your skin, The city has been ranked high among the nation’s onsen towns, especially for its popularity as a “Bihada no Yu” (lit. beautiful skin waters).
There are over 30 hotels and ryokan in the Ureshino Onsen area. We chose Wataya Besso as we were seeking a traditional experience, a Japanese room experience with Futon, tatami mats on the floor and sliding doors with paper screens. Very traditional building throughout. The highlight was you get Onsen water directly in your room. We had a short but deep bath in the bathroom, which also featured a separate space where we could sit on a stool to wash our bodies and hair.
Ureshino is also famous for its tea (ocha, green tea) and boiled tofu (yudofu), which are Rob’s favourite things….not!! So it was a good thing that they had other options for breakfast.
I’ll take over this part after Mami’s efforts at making me sound like someone who doesn’t enjoy Japanese cuisine. You could probably name 5 things I have tried but don’t want to eat ever again, and they are:
1. Natto: Fermented soya beans, which smell like old socks and taste awful.
2. Tofu: Tasteless, unimaginitive, colourless semi-hardened slop.
3. Sea Cucumber: Like eating something purchased from a tyre factory
4. Wasabi: Good way to kill the taste of anything you put it on.
5. Enoki mushrooms. Shaped like a pin. All stalk and a head like a pin. Useless!
Okay I’ve got that off my chest, so I will move on. Breakfast at Wataya Besso Ryokan was brilliant. Great mix of salads, grilled salmon and whole sardines, and yes I do eat the heads,
Tomago yaki (sliced egg rolls with soy sauce), scrambled eggs, fried bacon, boiled broccoli, corn, corn soup, miso soup, pickled vegies, rice (of course) croissants, fruit salad, cereal, all you can drink soft drink, coffee and green tea.
Of course no breakfast is complete without ice-cream and …….. they had self serve ice-cream, always a danger to their budget when I’m a guest. There were six flavours including vanilla, rainbow and I honestly can’t remember the rest as I only had eyes on the caramel ice-cream. It tasted very much like my favourite Okinawan sugar cane ice-cream. I wasn’t sure if it was the same or not, so what else could I do but go for seconds to try and confirm if it was Okinawan! Still wasn’t sure, but gee it was fun testing my theory.
Appetites completely sated from a wonderful breakfast
The trip home from Wataya Besso Ryokan in Ureshino was nearly 300km. Mami drove the first fifty and I did the rest. On the way home we had very strong wind gusts that at time moved Nana’s little Toyota box car sideways. Warning signs on the tollways we used had electronic signs warning drivers about the winds. When we got over the Kanmonkaikyo Bridge, which separates Kyushu from Yamaguchi Prefecture, the southernmost prefecture on Honshu, we were greeted with sleet and snow as well as the high winds. Did not make for an easy trip home but we made it safe and sound in roughly 3 hours.
It was good to see Yoshi and Youko again. and we played a game with them as soon as we got our gear unpacked. We know they like strawberries, so we bought some for them, at three different markets in Kyushu. Mami had devised a game based on our purchased strawberries, Mami devised three categories based on what we paid, cheap, average and expensive. We three had to close our eyes as Mami placed Sample A in our mouths. The same process followed with samples B and C. We then had to rate them in order of which we thought they cost. We did so mainly on taste. The picks were as follows:
Yoshi picked A, B then C
Yoko picked B, A then C
Rob picked B, A then C
The correct order in terms of price, which really was on taste, however, was C, B, A. Interesting that we all found the most expensive strawberries the least favoured. I’m sure they will all be eaten, regardless, in the next two days.
We finished the night casting some of our pictures onto the telly for Yoshi and Youko ro see. Yoshi is now jealous and says he wants to go to the same places we have been to, not just in Kyushu but also Hokkaido as well! Can’t wait to see how that plans out.