Walking around Beppu

When people think of Beppu, the first thing that comes to mind is hot springs. Why’s that? Well, Beppu just happens to have a lot of hot springs. Tourists tend to flock here specifically to visit 8 of their hot springs. Although I was one of those people that wanted to see these touristy hot springs, it’s safe to say that Beppu has a lot more to see than its hot springs. I took a bit of a walk around the city and this is what I ran into.

Spirituality

Beppu isn’t Kyushu’s Kyoto so I was pleasantly surprised to run into small, well maintained temples here. It seems the area I was in is dominantly devoted to Buddhism.

I loved the simplicity of Buddhism here. I felt as though anyone could take a moment to pray and could do so at any time. I found it welcoming. (I was never fond of religious workers that hover over people and take admission fees, so this was a nice change to see.)

Here, you can really appreciate the art of the Buddhist statues or if you’re a believer, you can pray in peace without any interruptions. The ability to pray in peace is great if you pray “differently” from native Japanese. (I’m looking at the Southeast Asian Buddhists here.)

Hot Springs

Since the city is known for hot springs, you really can’t avoid not seeing things related to hot springs. It’s just the nature of this city.

But the perk of seeing naturally occurring hot water outside of the touristy hot springs was that it was for free! Yes, you read that correctly. It was for free!

You can easily get a feel for how hot the water is. While it wasn’t that exciting to see, it was kind of cool to know that you could see this for free as well as pay to get food (eggs) cooked in the naturally occuring hot water.

My favorite spot that I ran into, though would have to be this “park”. I honestly don’t know where it’s located specifically, but if you can read kanji, maybe you can figure it out for me and in the process, you can visit it yourself, too!

It was a really peaceful place. No one was here. Not even a local. It was nice to see hot springs in action. Basically, out of nowhere, I would see steam rising up. You had to be there to experience how amazing the sight was. And this was free to see.

Suki, the cat

The original purpose of walking around Beppu was not so much to see what Beppu had to offer outside of its hot springs but to search for the hot springs. Apparently, my travel companion and I were trying to head to the hot springs by foot. This was probably the dumbest idea ever because the hot springs weren’t near us. And we soon learned this after encountering a cat.

I was being nonchalant, taking photos of this cat just because it’s a cat. And all of a sudden, this older man talks to me/us. He says the cat’s name is Suki and he lost me after that. It turns out he’s the owner of Suki and the owner to more cats. We were basically in front of his home because a Beppu map happens to be posted in front of his property. My travel companion was talking to this man for a while. She likes to say her Japanese is crap but I think that’s an understatement because she was able to gather that we were too far to walk to any of the springs and that we were better off walking a certain direction and taking a bus to the spring. She also informed me that the man had invited us to his home to see more of his cats to which we declined, of course. (Red flag alert but to be honest, he seemed like a nice guy that genuinely wanted to show off his cats. I’m thinking that was the end of his intention but who knows.)

While I don’t have any plans to visit Beppu again, Beppu was a place I had an interest in exploring more. I felt that the city was a bit more untouched and distant. If any of you are interested in visiting Beppu, I advise you to visit early and go beyond its hot springs attraction. I believe within Beppu or near Beppu, there’s a castle (Kifune Castle) that keeps an albino snake and a Sanrio Puroland (Harmonyland) and these could very well be things that you could do in addition to the hot springs.