Beppu and its Hells

Beppu gushes more hot-spring water than anywhere else in Japan - the city sits on a geothermal engine that vents steam from drain grates, backstreets and whole hillside neighbourhoods, most theatrically in the Kannawa district. The famous jigoku meguri is a circuit of seven 'hells': springs too violent or strange for bathing, toured instead as spectacle - Umi Jigoku's improbable cobalt-blue pond, blood-red Chinoike, the milky White Pond hell, a crocodile-warmed hell and the Tatsumaki geyser erupting on schedule. The actual bathing is the city's deeper pleasure: being buried to the neck in naturally heated sand at Takegawara's century-old bathhouse, mud baths, steam baths, and hillside onsen with bay views. Food joins in - jigoku-mushi kitchens let you steam-cook vegetables and eggs over the town's own vents.

What you actually see

• Umi Jigoku - the cobalt-blue hell in its landscaped garden.
• Chinoike Jigoku - the blood-red pond, oldest of the show springs.
• The sand bath - buried to the neck in hot black sand at Takegawara.
• Kannawa's steam lanes - a neighbourhood exhaling through every grate.

When to go

Year-round - the springs never pause - but cool, damp winter days double the steam and make the baths their most persuasive. Summer bathing in a subtropical city is committed work.

Honest expectations

Be clear on the deal: the hells are for looking, not bathing, and the circuit is unashamedly touristy - a couple of the seven are skippable animal-themed curiosities. The full seven-hell ticket suits completists; most travellers are happy with Umi and Chinoike plus a proper bath. Kannawa's slopes are steep and the hells are spread across two clusters linked by bus.

Nearby

Yufuin's boutique onsen valley, Mount Aso's caldera country and Oita city.