Beppu, the Hot Spring resort town
We continued south west to the island of Kyushu where the bullet train
terminated, and we transferred to a local train to go south along the east coast of Kyushu to Beppu.
Beppu is a hotspring resort town, built on the slope of a volcano, and there are over 3,000 hotsprings inside the
city. Famed generations ago as the party town for salarymen, it is now trying to re-invent itself as a foreigner
destination. The party mentality built the town as it is very much is set up to cater to large groups of
party-minded guests, with many bath-houses and pubs in close proximity to the main station.
We had booked ourselves into a traditional Ryokan, a small hotel where the staff laid out the futons in the
evenings and put them away in the mornings, and it had its own hotspring which it used to provide water to 5
hot-tub rooms, several of which were private and needed to be booked in advance. Yes, it was a wonderful
experience.
Of course, the persuit of the perfect meal continued!!
There were hotsprings and steam vents everywhere, and here a street vendor has
build a cooking rack over this vent coming out beside the sidewalk. He was selling food cooked by the vent!
The town has a series of famous geothermal features known as the "Hells", as nothing
would grow there. This is the "White pond" hell, first of the group on our itinerary.
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