Beppu

(Phew I'm finally almost all caught up with blogging! I was really starting to despair of that ever happening!)

Last weekend, Heather, Amanda and I took a weekend trip to Beppu. The city of Beppu is full of natural hot springs, in fact, it is the second-largest outpouring of thermal water in the world (after Yosemite). Some are the perfect temperature for bathing and are called “onsen”. Others are way too hot and are called “hells” (jigoku). The hells have been made into tourist attractions, in a style I like to call “Japanese kitsch” (you’ll see what I mean when you see the photos)!
It was a holiday on Monday (Coming of Age Day) so we had a three day weekend. We took the shinkansen (bullet train) on Friday night to Beppu, about a three hour trip. We had reservations at a really nice hostel. Of course, as soon as we arrived, the first order of business was to visit the hostel’s onsen! We had a beautiful Japanese style room. Heather and I shared a bunk bed, while Amanda slept on a Japanese-style futon on the floor.
The next day we visited two bamboo museums where we were really impressed by the beautiful ways which bamboo was woven to make baskets and screens and lamp shades as well as carved into toys and kitchen things. And we had no idea of the wide variety of bamboo!! (I thought of you, Angie! We could have used your expertise in deciphering some of the displays!) One of the museums also had some exhibits on the hot springs in the area, with samples of the water. Unfortunately, we couldn’t read the Japanese signs, but you can see Heather and Amanda getting into the hands-on science!

That afternoon, we visited the first of many onsens. This one, Takegawara, is a hot sand bath. We put on the yukata (cotton robes) and laid down in the depressions dug for us in the sand. Then using ancient-looking hoes, the attendants buried us to our necks in hot black sand! We were to lay there for 10 minutes. The sand was a very comfortable temperature, and I could have fallen asleep, except that I had to lie perfectly still so as not to disturb my sand blanket!
After our sand baths, we visited another onsen. This one was at a community center and reminded us of the onsen here in Himeji. The special feature here was the waterfall onsen. The water fell from a height of about 15 feet, so it felt like one of those fancy pulsating, high pressure shower heads. This onsen also had a whirlpool, a bubbly pool, and a cooler pool for doing water exercises.
Our second day was devoted to seeing the hells of Beppu. We first took a bus up the mountain-side so we could look down on Beppu and see the steam rising within the city. And we checked out these replica buildings where they were making bath salts the old-fashioned way. Very steamy and stinky! Then we had a mud bath! We went to Hoyoland Onsen where first we soaked in sulfury water (our skin stunk for the rest of the day!). Next we sat in the very steamy steam room until we couldn’t stand it anymore (about 2 minutes!). The first mud bath was indoors. The water had lots of suspended clay in it and we dug up more mud from the bottom to rub onto our skin. Then we went to the outdoors mud bath. We could have stayed there for hours! The water and mud were the perfect temperature. The sign at the onsen described the experience this way, but we didn’t agree! It was heavenly and we could have stayed in all day! But it was already noon and we had yet to visit any of the hells!
The first hell we visited was Oniishibouzu-jigoku. The “bouzu” part of the name refers to Buddhist monks. The boiling mud looks like a monk’s shaven head, hence the name of the hell! Most of the hells also had footbaths for people to soak their feet in.
We had a lunch of the traditional food of the area. I ordered the Dango soup. It was different from other Japanese soups – the noodles were very thick, like lasagna noodles and the broth was citrus flavored. For dessert we had steamed pudding. It was basically flan, but it was cooked in the hot springs! The next hell we visited was Umi-jigoku. The “umi” in the name refers to the sea, since this hell is a beautiful bright blue (we read somewhere that it was “artificial”, but we didn’t know if that meant it was so bright that it looked unnatural). In the hell was a basket of eggs, being boiled in the water. I tried one of these at a later onsen. It tasted like boiled egg with just a taste of hot spring water flavor. How do I know what hot spring water tastes like, you ask? Well, drinking hot spring water is reputed to be good for all that ails you, so I drank a bit.
We skipped a couple of the hells, because their version of Japanese kitsch was animals kept in deplorable conditions, according to the guidebooks. (From what I saw at Himeji Zoo over winter break, I have seen exactly what constitutes “deplorable” conditions here. It’s appalling and very depressing.)
Kamado-jigoku was the next hell to be visited. Check out the “cooking pot” in the background of the photo!
And I had to take this photo of these cute kids and the raccoon-turtle creature. And the ubiquitous basket of hard-boiled eggs.
The next hell was Shiraike-jigoku which was surrounded by a nice Japanese garden.
Then Chinoike-jigoku, the blood pond hell which looked kind of a muddy red that day.
Finally, Tatsumaki-jigoku, a geyser which erupted every 25 minutes.
While we were waiting for the next eruption, I amused myself by taking these photos. (I was trying to get a covert photo of this guy's furry white pimp coat)

After the geyser, the last hell to be visited, we headed to the beach to be buried in hot sand there. Unfortunately, the onsen was closed, so after dinner, we went to Hyotan Onsen. This onsen was beautiful. There was a sand bath, a steam bath, waterfall bath, a pebble bath (for walking on barefoot for a self-administered foot massage), and an outdoor bath with a waterfall to contemplate. We loved it so much that we went back the next morning for one final onsen in Beppu before catching the shinkansen home!