Natural Beauty and Relaxation

Some interesting facts about the vents in Beppu. There are 2900 of them, but if you dig 500 feet anywhere, you'll reach hot spring. 137 thousand tons of water is spewed forth each day, which is second in quantity to Yellowstone National Park. Water has a 50-year cycle here; rain that comes down today will come back from the earth in 2060 or so.

Here are some pictures from the hells:

Spout Hell

Blood Hell

Mud Hell

The vermilion color at Blood Hell made it my favorite. Hot springs run through ferrite, which creates the striking color. A volcano erupted after an earthquake some 400 years ago at the site of the Mud Hell, destroying a temple there and killing a monk inside it. The hells seemed tame, but beautiful, but our tour guide reminded us that at any time an earthquake could occur. Nothing sparks a touristic journey like the fear of death!

Our cabbie finally dropped us off at our hillside onsen. After a day of hell visiting, it was time to relax. We were greeted a kind staff, who served us tea and a Japanese cookie in our traditional room to begin our onsen stay.

Room entrance

Slippers outside our door

After receiving our robes, we went down to the public bath. Following the tradition, we cleaned ourselves by showering while sitting on small chairs in a shared space, and then went down to sit in the warm, bubbling, sulfurous water.

Baths are traditionally separated by gender, but this onsen allowed women to bathe in the men's pool (which was much bigger). Tradition also dictates to bathe naked, which we did, so when JaneAnn came to join us, we looked away for a moment as she took off her towel and stepped into the warm waters. The spa was wonderfully relaxing. Our entire bodies were at peace while in the water and for hours afterwards.


After relaxing for a little while on our room's 16 tatami mats (room sizes are traditionally defined by the number of tatamis they hold), we put on our slippers and headed to another room for what was a marvelous dinner.

Dinner is served...peekaboo!

The courses were served at a leisurely pace with plenty of beer and sake, and a small glass of plum wine with one pickled plum to start. A list of things we had includes 3 types of sashimi, pickled vegetables, beef shabu shabu served in a bamboo box, seafood soup in milk broth, shrimp dumpling and eggplant tempura, simple scallion lemon broth with chicken dumpling, rice with salty seaweed and small fish, and a number of items steamed in the hot springs served in a small straw house - potato, chicken wing, potato jelly. Dessert was a tasty Crème Caramel-like pudding also cooked in a steam vent.

mmmmm

Such satisfying sustenance. While eating our food, we shared many "mmm"s, "oooh"s, and "that's so good!"s. There was a phone at the table that allowed us privacy, but access to service in case we needed anything.

We arrived back in our room with our futons ready for a long, happy night of sleep. The sound of the hot springs in the background was like running water. I woke up to the sun rise.

Sunrise from our Onsen Window

We were served a traditional Japanese breakfast that morning, which included horse mackeral terikayi sushi, and a salad with a very good miso dressing, among other things.

As we took a bus back to the Beppu train station after another trip to the hot springs in the morning, we spoke about the color of the hot springs that morning. Dave (who's working/living in China) thought of a Chinese word to describe the color, and after some discussion later, we finally came up with the word for it in English: celadon. We joked about learning new English while in Japan; we are certainly seeing new things!