Today we decided to relive some of our time in Beppu by starting the morning off with a bath! The hostel has a public bath room, separate for men and women, and both the private showers were occupied so we thought "eh, let's do it". Unfortunately both of our baths were kind of cold so it didn't have quite the same appeal as an onsen.

After dressing we took the subway a couple of stops away to a big park called Ohori Koen. We strolled around the big pond there and also stopped into a Japanese Garden. It was lovely in there and Shannon mentally took landscaping notes for our future garden.

We then walked on over to the Fukuoka Castle ruins where we had a quick look around. Nothing too exciting there.

We then made our way via subway and some more walking to Fukuoka Tower. The tower is located close to the coast so it was super breezy and quite chilly in that part of town. We took the elevator up to the top of the tower and took in the beautiful and wide views. Luckily it was a clear day so we could see far.

We descended from the tower and walked over to Fukuoka dome which is the home ground for the local baseball team, the Fukuoka Hawks. We had some Japanese curry for lunch at the nearby mall, played some games at the arcade (Shannon had a go at the baseball one where the machine fires balls at you) and then travelled by bus back into the shopping area.

We explored a few more department stores for a few hours but didn't find anything to buy. We did, however, stumble across an "ice skating rink" which upon closer inspection turned out to be some kind of cold plastic rather than ice. The skaters were more stomping around than gliding. Very strange.

We are now back at the hostel. We both had another bath when we returned as the water was now warm! Hoo raa! Shannon's dogs were barking so he particularly enjoyed the soak. Our feet are now sapping in more heat from our under table heater. Great invention.

Looooong day of walking today. Might just have an early one after grabbing some ramen across the street for dinner.

Postscript: I think this ramen was my favourite of the trip. They put some pickled chillis on top which were just divine!