We woke to bright blue sky and sunshine and, as there was no point in continuing on to Mount Aso, we decided to retrace our steps and have a look at the view from the Daikanbou Observatory, which we had apparently driven past the day before but due to the low cloud, rain & wind had completely missed. The drive in the sunshine revealed an amazing (slightly scary) landscape, mountain tops, vertical drops and so green. The observatory lived up to it’s PR material and provided us with a jaw dropping vista of the largest caldera in the world – for those of you who have been to Santorini, it’s bigger and there’s no water, but the scale of it takes your breath away in the same way.

Then it was on to our night in a traditional Ryokan at Kurokawa Onsen. We have decided that every second or third night we need a break from coffin dwelling. I had booked the Ryokan quite randomly through Booking.com, it was quite expensive and so I was nervous that it would be a terrible disappointment, how wrong can you be. A perfect little Japanese house in a perfect inn, in a perfect little Japanese town, built along a river in a cool and shady valley. We took a number of photos of our room, but they just don’t do it justice nor do they capture the atmosphere so I have decided to leave most of them out and concentrate instead on the food.

We spent an inordinate amount of time in the bath. In addition to the private bath in out house, the Ryokan had half a dozen other open air and indoor hot baths. We tried several of them and it was the perfect antidote to the trials and tribulations of camper van living.

The Japanese dinner was delicious and beautifully presented. Breakfast was another story, the Japanese do many things fabulously, but breakfast isn’t one of them. All a bit too white and wobbly for Robert and with fish & pickles thrown in. Not a winning combination.