It’s a place of hell because the hot springs here are REALLY boiling hot. It is literally translated as ‘sea hell’. Their Jigoku pudding and onsen eggs are their special delicacies available there.
Visiting Honda Sun was one of the highlights of this trip as it was a rare opportunity for as tourists to visit a car manufacturing plant. Honda Sun, which operates as a subsidiary of Honda Motor Co. Ltd, employs the disabled which made up 50.7% of their total employee rate at Honda Sun Co., Ltd. Out of the 96 disabled employees, 57 are severely disabled while the rest suffered from mild disabilities.
At Honda Sun, they believe that everyone is capable of contributing to the society, even the handicapped. It is really heartening to know that there are such social entreprises in Japan that help the disabled to see the value in them. True, indeed. Everyone is special in their own ways and each of us is quipped with a special talent.
We were not allowed to take photographs within the factory so this is all what I’ve got but we went through a tour of their assembling factory and it was such an eye-opening experience for us.
Since we are running against time, we had a bento lunch set on the bus. It wasn’t as bad as I thought! It isn’t any other take-away food but a nicely packed bento box with full of delicacies in it.
Our second school visit was Oita Maizuru High School and it is one of the Super Science High School where there have special science programmes for pupils. During our school tour, their pupils presented their research projects to us in English. They weren’t quite as fluent but were comprehensible.
This seems like a prestigious school where students were very disciplined.
Students presenting their project about fires using simulation software, FDS. They are working out on a strategy to help students evacuate safely from school during a fire.
Cleaning seems like their top priority here in Japan.
This group was researching on paper planes where they would design a paper airplane which can fly the fastest.
This project topic by the next group of pupils were rather interesting. They researched on Oita hot springs to find out why some hot springs changes colour every day.
This group worked on the ‘cleaning action’ of microorganisms. Yes, microorganisms can help us purify water!
We retreated to Aso Plaza Hotel for the evening where the rooms with tatami mats are much bigger. I’ve been sleeping on tatami mats for 2 nights in a row and it was rather nice and cosy to sleep on woven straw mats. We slept on comfy thick bed covers which acts as mattresses but it was thick enough to make us felt comfortable.
There’s a hot spring at Aso Plaza Hotel too!
Read about Day 3 of my trip in the next post!
Watch my travel vlog in Kyushu, Japan here!
