Yufuin

At the beginning of February we made a trip to Yufuin.  It is a small town, which is a 1 hour train ride from Oita. It was the last trip that we organized, motivated by the oncoming goodbye from Marion, our fellow Paderborn student, 2 days from then. I and Fabian were the last 2 Germans to leave Oita one week after Marion.

I am writing this post at my German desk. All I write down now are memories from three weeks ago. I remember it to be a good and fun trip. It is sad to think of Yufuin now, which seems so unreal now that I breathe German air.

We went to the mountain first, in order to hike a little bit. We only wanted to go up a small hill, take some pictures and then head back to the town. But what looked like a small hill, which we could walk up in our pretty city shoes, turned out to be rather a Mount Everest!

 

Our humble aim was to walk up the small cute hill to the left. On the right is Yufuin mountain, where some of our fellow students climbed up - it took them 4 hours to go up! 

On the way up the "small" hill we slowly realized that it was much steeper and much more exhausting than expected to "walk" up. I sometimes even had to cling to the trees in order to pull me up the hill.

On half of the way to the top - panting, sweating, swearing - we declared it to be our mountain top. So, "finally there"! Haha. We were 8 people when we started to hike, and when we arrived we were only 7. Haha. 

But we were of good humour. The fact that we mastered the mountain (according to our own definition) motivated us so much that we had the energy to joke around. 

Hungry after the exercise we tried to find a restaurant where we could eat. We could not decide and ended up in a not so pretty shop where they sold Ramen noodles. But we were hungry and had no money. 

Voilà. Tonkatsu Ramen. One weird thing about Ramen is that it makes you crave something sweet after having eaten it. It also makes you hungry pretty soon. 

We walked around Yufuin and wondered why a friend of ours had declared this city to be his favorite in Japan. It was boring, nothing to see, and not spectacular at all. Then we remembered another friend telling us about a pretty lake. We asked some locals for directions and were guided to this street. 

Beautiful and charming Yufuin. Suddenly we saw masses of people, many small and cute shops, charming houses... So that's why our friend loves Yufuin so much! There were so many shops that tempted us to go in. But as we wanted to see the lake by sunlight, we heaviheartedly had to drag each other along to find the lake. We only hoped that this "lake" would be worth it!

And there it was. Worth the renouncement. 

Some hungry animals begged for food. The size of the children made us wonder, if the duck would mistake the kids for a snack.

 A beautiful day and beautiful people.

On the way back from the lake, we finally could free our desire and explore the shops. This is one of the most famous in Yufuin. It is for merchandise products from the Japanese anime studio Ghibli. They produced movies like Chihiros Reise in Zauberland and Das wandelnde Schloss.

And they produced the anime "My neighbour Totoro" (1988). It is very famous in Japan, and also amongst Japan-lovers around the world. This big stuffed thing is Totoro. 

Yufuin turned out be one of my favorite cities in Japan. It is a very charming and beautiful town. I wish we have had more time to explore the small individual shops and boutiques there.