My last Beppu bath and 7.5 hours of train to Tokyo - Fri Mar 13

I had a quick hunt around the station for a bath I'd seen previously but not tried, but to no avail.
Searching endlessly for everything, and frequently not finding things in the end, is becoming so familiar as to have bred contempt.

I popped in to the office of an election official to ask for directions (which looked a lot like a sharehouse kitchen and loungeroom) and was greeted cordially by several retirement-aged political aide types. One offered to walk me around to his favourite local spring. Naturally, when I entered, the customers were all well past retirement, some scrub-a-dub-dubbing, others struggling back into their clothes. A couple of them had a brief chat to me, and one nice old fella offered me some soap.

I picked up my bags from the hotel and headed for my three train, 7.5 hour journey back to Tokyo.I bought a lovely little dinner box with sixteen different little things inside, most of them unfamiliar. I confess that, halfway through, I had a pang for Grandma's lamb cutlets and boiled beans, carrots and potatoes dinners.

The second train was unbearably hot, and I sat in a tshirt with my pant legs rolled up to the knees and dabbed myself with a wet towel from the hot springs.

I spent some time sifting through the hundreds of pages of hosts in the WWOOFing directory, trying to set myself up with a shortlist. There are lots of great options. I was still far from having finished reading by the time the battery drew low. (See WWOOF Japan for background info on what the organisation is all about, and some examples of the hosts available.)

I struck up a conversation with on the last bullet train with the lady next to m, a midwife who was beginning to teach. Eventually, we arrived in Tokyo. She rode with me on the first underground, and walked me to the platform of my connecting subway to before heading off to walk home. So lovely.

The evening ended in my somewhat botched homemade haircut at Teru's hands. Wasn't going to badly till he managed to shave a shallow circle over the joint holding my skull to my neck. I ended up with a shorter cut than originally anticipated, but made a decent recovery.