We got up early this morning and used the onsen facilities before breakfast. The onsen baths here are really quite lovely – complete with mountain views, and they don’t ever seem to be busy which is always a bonus.
This morning we were having breakfast at the hotel which we were indeed looking forward to. Luckily we were both hungry (not entirely sure why, as all we have been doing is eating since we got here) because breakfast was a lot! But, omg, so, so good! We love Japanese breakfasts! Here is a photo of us looking awkward and weird with our breakfast.


After breakfast we walked down to the train station to book our train trip for tomorrow and to ask many questions in poor Japanese and confuse the very helpful staff because I got Kara/made (from/to) confused. We got there in the end!
Train tickets sorted, we headed off down the main street, headed for the Comico Art Museum. Of course, we ended up stopping every 5 minutes to either look in a shop or to take photos of Sakura. It’s all very pretty around here.


Comico Art Museum was super cool. Small, but contained artworks from 3 of our favourites – Yoshitomo Nara, Takeshi Murakami & Yayoi Kusama. Also, it was really quiet there, hardly any other tourists. Very cool designed building also.




All museumed out, it was time to go check out the shopping street. Something funny happened around about this time…but neither of us can remember what on earth it was. We remember saying “we must remember this for the blog” but, sorry I am afraid we did not remember it for the blog.
First stop was the Studio Ghibli shop. Yes, I know I have all the Ghibli things already, but, well they had some really nice and different things in here and yes, I did buy some things.

It was getting really busy along the shopping street. But we were due for a coffee. We randomly turned into a little side street and saw this very cool looking cafe. There was no one in it, but the staff seemed nice and the coffee machine looked good, so we decided to give it a try. We also got gently coerced in to buying pudding to go with our coffees. They gave us free bottles of water shaped like a Japanese Daruma. The coffee was really good – but the puddings were outstanding!! Omg so very delicious! We also made the place popular- everyone started coming in after we sat down. Would recommend if you are ever in the area.


We chilled there for a while before heading off to look at more things. We found the “Yufuin Floral Village” which had lots of Studio Ghibli shops, a cat cafe, an owl cafe and all sorts of other random things including goats and squirrels.


We found a shop that only sold cat things – it was playing classical music but the tunes were sung by cats. Well I guess they weren’t real cats singing…
Lunch was needed so we opted for a Lawson Konbini lunch of onigiri and egg sando and found a lake to sit by to enjoy them. Winning.



We bought a bunch of random stuff and then we saw the Snoopy cafe and had to have one of the icecreams – Yufuin milk & Oita Strawberry. Yes…it was delicious
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Found a Miffy cafe but couldn’t eat any more sadly. But they had some cute treats.

We spent the afternoon wandering around, and seeing more cherry blossoms and looking at the scenic sights.

Then we picked up some dinner from the local supermarket (because we didn’t book dinner at our hotel early enough, and most of the restaurants around here close once all the day tripping tourists have left for the day) Also, supermarket dinners are the best.
Checked out the views and the foot bath at the hotel before enjoying our supermarket bento in our room. (Incidentally each of our bento cost less than $5! Bargain!)



Oh no we got these White Strawberries too – I know that probably just sounds like they are not ripe, but they are and they are so sweet and tasty!

