Beppu Hot Springs

Beppu has been a hot springs resort since the Edo Period (17th Century), when bathers gathered for medicinal cures and recuperation, and is still one of Japan’s favourite resorts attracting more than a billion visitors annually, now mostly for relaxation. Hot water gushes from eight different geothermal hot spots around the city, each with multiple public baths. Beppu also boasts the largest range of bath types, from the usual hot water baths, to hot sand baths, steam baths and mud baths.

Takegawara is one of the city’s most famous bath houses, now part of the Beppu Hot Springs area, it was built in 1879 and has the original elegant architecture, but with updated facilities inside including sand bathing. Hamawaki is another famous spring resort, one of the first in Beppu, it takes advantage of hot water rising up from under the sand on the beach where it was built.

It’s still common for local people to use the public facilities instead of their own bathrooms but it is considered a common courtesy to have a scrub BEFORE you get into the public baths.

It probably helps Beppu’s popularity that it is built on a narrow bay to take full advantage of views of the ocean in one direction and the mountains in the other, but visitors will find these views obscured by rising pillars of steam from the 2850 springs, some like geysers of steam, called hells and are just for looking at.