Rained in at Ibusuki

The weather, which had cooperated so far, finally decided it had had enough. On and off (mostly on) rain all day meant we spent the day sleeping, eating, sleeping a bit more, and getting ready to leave tomorrow. The hotel has a buffet breakfast that consists of many things one should never eat, especially first thing in the morning, and some yogurt, bread and cereal. the view from the dining room was very nice

Not wanting to waste an entire day, Sumi and I headed down to the beach in front of the hotel during a brief respite of rain. It is a black sand beach and it being at low tide when we went out, we we able to walk around quite a bit, until the rain came back.

For dinner, we thought we would try a local ramen restaurant, so we headed back into town. When we got close, we realized that the ramen place was lunch only. We had seen a local curry shop next to the station online, Curry Do, which translates to "The Way of the Curry" and according to the web site they were open, so we went there.

There was an old man doing some reading with what looked like a textbook in the dining area and nobody else in the shop. When we tried to open the door, it was locked and for a moment we thought we were out of luck. He was apparently just taking a break while his wife was out, however, and he let us in, took our orders (two vegetable curries) and began making noise in the kitchen. Usually curry is "fast food" in that it's mostly prepared ahead of time, but this was taking a bit longer. We discovered why when it came out:

Tempura vegetable curry

He was making tempura, which is a light breading. The vegetables were very quickly fried in tempura batter just enough to bake the tempura, but leaving the vegetables mostly fresh. A very nice surprise, and some very tasty vegetables that I still don't know what they all were. Another big thumbs up!

Back at the hotel, I got to try out their outdoor onsen, which overlooked the bay south of the city. I must have timed it perfectly, because I was the only one using the baths. One does not bring cameras into an onsen, so I couldn't take any pictures, but it was a very relaxed way to end the day.