I’m on a Boat

BIG travel day today. We had to get from Yufuin to Matsuyama – quite some distance.

The day started off with another tasty breakfast at the Ryokan.

After breakfast, we checked out and walked down to the train station and caught the Yufu train, bound for Beppu. This trip would take about one hour.

The train was quite empty, which was nice. I keep hearing about how crowded Japan is these days – and I guess it is in Tokyo & Kyoto, but it’s nice to know you can still get away from the crowds pretty easily.

It was quite a scenic train trip with lots of tunnels and mountain views.

We got in to Beppu around lunch time, but we had to catch a bus to the Ferry port for our 2pm ferry. We had planned to have lunch in Beppu but it was a bigger town than we expected and not a lot of the restaurants were open and there didn’t seem to be any of our favourite chain cafes like Mister Donut, Doutor or Cafe De Crie, so we grabbed some snacks from Lawson, got on the bus bound for the port and hoped the rumours we heard that the ferry sold bento were true.

Of course we ended up getting to the ferry terminal waaaay too early. There was a huge Japanese souvenir shop nearby that we had a quick look in, but we can’t buy any more stuff, I have already bought all the things. Walked over to the ferry terminal and bought our “economy” ferry tickets, and then had about an hour to wait until boarding. There wasn’t really anything to do at the terminal and it was really cold. Ended up rugging up like I was in Iceland or something. There was one rather average looking restaurant that we decided not to eat at and a small souvenir shop.

Finally it was time to board and my fears of it being a rickety old ship were allayed – it was a huge ship and the inside was super shiny and new! the economy class section had a few very comfy looking seats, but was mostly sectioned into tatami mat areas. Really super cool. We found one we liked and settled in for the 2 hour 45 minute trip.

The cafe did sell bento lunches, so we got some of those. They were of average quality – a little greasy, but hey for 700 yen (that’s about $7) we can’t really complain. They were tasty enough.

We had a big window, with views out to the open ocean. Plus you could got up on the top deck out in the open. It was a bit scary up there so I didn’t stay there that long.

The inside of the ferry was really shiny and nice. So well designed and apparently the first class rooms upstairs even have beds!

The time actually went quite quick. Had our lunch, a Haagen Daz icecream and a bit of a nap and before we knew it, we had arrived at the port in Yawatahama. It was only a little bumpy too – mostly smooth sailing. Good ferry. Would recommend. 5 stars ⭐️

At Yawatahama we went up to the viewing deck and watching incredibly large trucks drive out of the ship. It’s crazy to think they were all in there. I mean, how does it even float?

Because we spent so long watching the trucks disembarking, we missed the bus to the train station and the next one wasn’t due for a while. So, we ended up catching a taxi to Yawatahama train station, where we caught a train to Mastsuyama – about 50 minutes. We ate some egg sandwiches on this journey.

We made it to Matsuyama around 6:30pm, but still had to catch another form of transport to get to our hotel. For the last part of our trip we would catch a street car. Unfortunately our last part of the journey was foiled when we caught the wrong street car and we had to get off and catch another – luckily we realised before we were too far off course.

After a short street car ride and walk we made it to our base for the next 3 nights – Dormy Inn, Matsuyama. After checking in we went for a bit of a wander, but most things were already closing down for the night.

There did seem to be a lot of Karaoke bars though. We were tempted….