An onsen town where steam cooks your lunch
Beppu has more hot spring sources than anywhere else in Japan, and in the Kannawa district steam rises from vents all along the lanes. Cook your own jigoku mushi, "hell steaming," by setting vegetables, seafood and eggs over the vents, then walk the "hells," springs too hot to bathe in that you view instead. It is about 2 hours from Hakata by limited express.
Buy ingredients here or bring your own, and steam them in a basket over the hot spring vents. A steamer costs 400 yen (small) or 600 yen (large) for 15 minutes, given out in order of numbered tickets with no reservations. There is also a foot bath and a foot steamer.
A steam bath said to have been started in 1276 by the monk Ippen. You lie on a bed of sweet flag, a fragrant medicinal herb, in a small stone room filled with hot spring steam. Children under junior high age cannot use it, the foot steamer outside is free, and tattoos are allowed.
Hot gray mud swells into round bubbles that look like the shaved heads of monks, which gave this hell its name. There is a foot bath too.
One of Beppu's seven hells, with ponds of different colors and jets of steam to walk among. There is a foot bath too.
A hilltop lookout over the steam plumes rising all across the town, the scene Beppu is known for. Free and always open; about 15 minutes uphill on foot from the hot spring town.