Beppu Hatto

The Beppu Hatto — the eight springs of Beppu — are Beppu, Kannawa, Myoban, Kankaiji, Kamegawa, Hamawaki, Horita and Shibaseki. They are spread across the hillside and the shore, and the water genuinely differs between them: sulphur at Myoban, iron at Kannawa, simple alkaline near the shore.

The two hundred that nobody writes about

Beyond the famous baths, Beppu has a network of small municipal and neighbourhood-association bathhouses — plain concrete or wooden buildings, run collectively by the streets around them, often with no staff at all.

You put a coin in a box, you wash outside the tub, you get in. Entry is frequently ¥100 to ¥300. There is no shampoo, no towel, no English and usually no changing room worth the name. These are where Beppu bathes daily, and there are around a hundred of them.

Most visitors pay ¥1,500 for a hotel spa with a view. The town itself pays ¥100 for a shed with a good tub. The shed is the better experience.

Rules, briefly and without fuss

Wash before you get in, sitting on the stool at the tap, and rinse the soap off completely. The tub is for soaking in clean, not for cleaning. Do not put your towel in the water — fold it on your head, which is what everyone else is doing.

Bathing is naked and separated by sex; the noren curtains are red for women and blue for men. Nobody looks at anybody. Tattoos are still refused at some facilities, though Beppu is more relaxed than most of Japan — the smaller neighbourhood baths generally do not care, and larger hotel spas sometimes do.

Getting a card stamped

The Spa Passport scheme gives you a booklet stamped at participating baths across the eight districts. Collect eight stamps and you get a certificate; collect eighty-eight and you get a small ceremony and your name on a board. People do this over years.

On a port day you will manage two or three. That is enough to understand that the water is genuinely different in each.