Photo: Adobe Stock / LicensedChecked against official sources · updated · Takumi Yamada
Beppu is Japan's hot-spring capital, a port town in Oita where steam rises from drains, gardens and the gaps between houses. People come for the seven hells of Kannawa, boiling ponds coloured cobalt blue, grey mud and iron red, and for baths of every kind, hot sand included. Your ship ties up at No.4 Pier, north of town, about 15 minutes by bus from the hells and a lunch you steam yourself in volcanic vapour.
Beppu has around 2,200 hot spring vents and discharges more hot water than any other town in Japan — a volume second in the world only to Yellowstone. Steam comes out of drains, gardens and the gaps between houses, and the local word for the seven most violent springs is "hells."
Read the story
Beppu is not one hot spring resort. It is eight — each with different water chemistry, a different character and a different price, ranging from a marble-floored hotel spa to a tin-roofed neighbourhood shed that costs a hundred yen and has no attendant.
Read the story
Beppu had hot water for a thousand years and was a minor bathing village. Then one man arrived in 1911, decided this town should be famous, and invented most of the techniques Japanese tourism still uses — including the bus tour with a singing guide.
Read the story
Oita eats things the rest of Japan does not: chicken as tempura, cold noodles with kimchi, and vegetables cooked in a hole in the ground by steam that comes out at a hundred degrees and tastes faintly of salt.
Read the story
Every ship calling here offers a Yufuin excursion, and Yufuin is genuinely lovely. It is also an hour each way, and it is the opposite of Beppu in every respect that matters. Choosing wrongly is the most common mistake made in this port.
Read the storyCruise seasons run spring to autumn, but the port changes underneath them.
Bathing weather without the cold. The hells steam more visibly in cool air.
Comfortable everywhere, and the monkeys are active.
The best month for combining Beppu with Yufuin on a long call.
Kyushu rains hard. Bathing and steam-cooking are unaffected — this is a rain-proof port.
A hot spring town in August is a hard sell. Go early, use the sand bath, drink reimen.
Kyushu is exposed. Check your itinerary rather than assuming.
Warm days, cool evenings, and steam visible over the whole town at dawn.
Cold air makes the yukemuri — the steam plumes — dramatic. The signature view.
Kyushu winters are mild. This is when a hot bath makes the most sense.
