You really CAN go to hell

Apologies, faithful readers. Please don:t take it personally. I do hereby inform you that you CAN go to hell.

It is located in the portside city of Beppu. It costs 400 yen (about $3.60) to get in, and it smells of spoiled eggs. If however, you want to go the Dante-ish route, there are actually 8 hells, and you can go to all for 2000 yen! Then not only does hell smell like rotten eggs, but there are bubbling mudlike pits (very cool; pictures coming soon), alligators snapping at each other, and...a grove of pink flamingos?!? (We didn:t get that one either. I:m sure it:s *someone:s* definition of hell.)

Realizing that we only needed the Reader:s Digest version of hell, the rest of the day was dedicated to more spas, food, and train. These led to some interesting encounters.

The sushi:s like gold; the udon is delish.

But we needed a break. And the night before we happened by an Indian restaurant. Off we went in search of the Indian restaurant, only to find they were closed until 6. But fear not! The new Jamaican restaurant had just opened next door.
This is one of my favorite parts of Japan--walking into an un-Japanese restaurant where the chef is Jamaican, the wait staff is Japanese, and the clientele is everything, and we all say konichi-wa! Heh.

After our host Karem brought us some delectable and tender jerk chicken, and jamaican potato chips (made with yellow potats instead of white), we got to talk to him about why he opened a restaurant and what he was doing in Japan. Turns out he opened the restaurant to *pay the bills* (which sounded a lot to me like becoming a musician to *pay the bills*, but we weren:t gonna argue.) And he had some interesting observations about citizenship and being an expat.

Back during the summer, he applied to a symposium in Belgrade through his university. He applied for a visa, and then the London train bombing happened. (joy of joys, on my birthday, July 7.) Turns out one of the bombers spent :four months: in Jamaican, wasn:t really Jamaican, but suddenly Jamaicans the world over cannot get their visas--some of whom have been getting visas without trouble for years!

Admittedly, I tell this story from hearsay. I may not be completely informed. But I liked his punchline..."if you:re a terrorist, you:re Jamaican, but once you run 9.67 in the Olympics, you:re British." Damn. At least in the Bay to Breakers, we still call them Kenyans. :-)

That will have to be it for now. Next post, SmaSTATION, Garthe:s TV show!