Beppu
別府33°17′ N 131°29′ EOnsen townPop. 115,992Kyushu
Beppu suits riders who want a hot spring city on the sea with a public bath on every corner and cheap toriten for dinner, and its steaming hills are as much about looking as soaking.
Photo 663highland · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.5 and others, credited in the gallery
Who should base here
Stay a night or two to soak in a different bath each evening and ride the bay or the hills by day.
Beppu sits on Beppu Bay below steaming hills, and its springs are everywhere. Takegawara, a city-run bath from 1879 in a 1938 building ten minutes' walk from the station, still covers bathers in warm sand, and the city's tourism site lists it as tattoo-friendly.
Up in Kannawa the seven hells boil blue, red and white; four of them are national Places of Scenic Beauty. Toriten, chicken fried in tempura batter, was born at Toyoken in the early Showa years and turns up on menus all over Oita.
Giant's Beppu store rents road and cross bikes for the coast road along the bay and the climbs inland, and Oita's cycling site maps routes round Beppu Bay and the Kunisaki peninsula.
Quick answers about Beppuよくある質問
Is Beppu a good place to stay?
Stay a night or two to soak in a different bath each evening and ride the bay or the hills by day.
Within 12 km
Places to eat and drink nearby食
Within 12 km