Kannawa Onsen — photo: 松岡明芳 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Kyushu onsen: Beppu, Yufuin, Kurokawa, and the water
You land at Fukuoka with two or three days and a vague plan to "do the onsen". Every guide offers the same three names and compares them the same way: Beppu is lively, Yufuin is pretty, Kurokawa is quiet. That is true, and it leaves out the part you will actually feel when you get in — the three towns do not have the same water, and the springs closest to Fukuoka are not the ones you think.
The first hour out of Fukuoka is cool water
Our database holds 1,538 onsen towns across Japan, 171 of them in Kyushu. For the Kyushu towns we hold coordinates and a source temperature for, we measured straight-line distance from Hakata Station. Inside 50 km there are 12, and only one comes out of the ground at 42 °C or above: Furuyu in the Saga hills, at 43 °C. The rest sit between 15.7 °C and 40 °C, and several are below 30 °C.
Move out to between 50 and 100 km — the band where the volcanoes of Aso, Kujū and Unzen start — and it flips. Of the 19 towns in that band with a temperature on record, 15 reach 42 °C, and several reach 100 °C at source.
Across all of Kyushu, 71 of the 116 towns with a recorded temperature are at 42 °C or above, and 26 are above 60 °C. The national figure is 573 of 1,167, just under half. Kyushu is hotter than the country as a whole; it is just not hot right next to its biggest city.
That does not make the near springs a waste of time. Futsukaichi, 14 km from Hakata and a 10-minute walk from JR Futsukaichi Station, has been a bathing town for well over a thousand years and has a cheap public bathhouse. If you have one free evening in Fukuoka, go. But we hold no source temperature for it, the towns around it are cool, and if your trip is about the water, plan to go further.
Beppu: one city, many kinds of water
Beppu, about 106 km from Hakata on the east coast, is not one onsen town but a cluster of them spread across a city of over 100,000 people. In our records it carries five water types at once: salt, sulfate, iron, acidic and sulfur. Most onsen towns in our records list one.
What this means in practice is that "a bath in Beppu" tells you nothing about the water. A bath in the Kannawa district, up the hill where steam comes out of the street drains, runs from a source at 100 °C and has to be cooled. A bath down near the station may be clear and mild. Beppu's inns and bathhouses usually post which source they use; if you want the cloudy, strong-smelling water, look for the words 硫黄泉 (iō-sen), sulfur spring, or 酸性泉 (sansei-sen), acidic spring, rather than just "onsen".
The famous boiling ponds, the 地獄 (jigoku), "hells", are for looking at, not bathing in. They are a paid sightseeing circuit. Budget half a day for them if you want them and do not confuse them with the bath you came for.
Yufuin: an enormous amount of gentle water
Yufuin is 95 km from Hakata, and about 15 km inland from Beppu over a mountain pass. Its water is a simple spring — low in dissolved minerals, clear, with no strong smell and nothing that stings. What it has instead is volume: our records put the whole town's flow at about 38,600 litres a minute, which places it among the largest-volume onsen towns in the country.
So the choice between Beppu and Yufuin is not only "city or countryside". It is also strong, varied, sometimes smelly water against mild, plentiful, clear water. Neither is better. If you or a travelling companion found a sulfur bath too much before, Yufuin is the safe one.
Yufuin's main street fills with day-trippers from late morning to late afternoon. The baths inside the inns are quiet at those hours; the street is not. Walk it early or after five.
Kurokawa: sulfur, and very hot at source
Kurokawa, about 88 km from Hakata in the mountains north of Mount Aso, is recorded as a sulfur town with source temperatures from 80 to 98 °C. The water in its outdoor baths is often cloudy and smells of sulfur. Take off silver jewellery; sulfur water blackens it.
Kurokawa is small — a single river valley — and it is where the pass for visiting other inns' baths began. The wooden 入湯手形 (nyūtō tegata) lets you into the outdoor baths of several inns during the day. Most of those baths are outdoors, some have separate hours for men and women, and several close by early evening. There is no train; you arrive by highway bus from Fukuoka or Kumamoto, or by car, and most of those buses need a reserved seat.
Past the big three
If you are willing to go beyond the three names, the Aso–Kujū area around Kurokawa has the densest cluster of genuinely hot water in the island.
- Tsuetate, 73 km from Hakata on the Kumamoto–Ōita border, is a salt spring recorded at 100 °C. The town steams vegetables and eggs in its vents.
- Hagenoyu, 82 km, is 92 to 97 °C, both salt and sulfur, and is a handful of buildings on a steaming hillside.
- Sujiyu, 89 km, is a 58 to 63 °C salt spring known for its 打たせ湯 (utase-yu), where water falls from a spout onto your shoulders.
- Nagayu, 106 km, is 40 to 45 °C with bicarbonate and carbon dioxide water. Carbon dioxide springs are rare in Japan; the bubbles cling to your skin.
- Jigoku Onsen on the south side of Aso is a sulfur spring from 60 to 100 °C, about 15 minutes by taxi from Chōyō Station.
On the west side, on the Shimabara Peninsula, Obama faces the sea with a source recorded at 105 °C and about 15,000 litres a minute, and Unzen, up the mountain, is a sulfur town with its own steaming "hells". Both are about an hour by bus from Isahaya Station.
If you are taking the new Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen toward Nagasaki, two stops are onsen towns. Takeo, 58 km from Hakata, is a bicarbonate spring at 45 to 51 °C, ten minutes' walk from Takeo-Onsen Station, with a vermilion gate you will recognise from photographs. Ureshino, 68 km, is salt and bicarbonate at pH 7.8 and has its own station on the line. Both are easy overnight stops, and Takeo is among the nearest hot-at-source water to Fukuoka by rail.
In the far south, Ibusuki, about an hour by train from Kagoshima-Chūō, is an 82 °C salt spring with 53 inns, known for the 砂むし (suna-mushi), where staff bury you up to the neck in naturally heated sand on the beach. You wear a yukata; it is not a naked bath. Across the bay, Furusato on Sakurajima is a 48 °C salt spring under an active volcano.
How to put a Kyushu trip together
With two nights, most people do best with one of two shapes. The east loop: train from Hakata to Yufuin (a little over two hours on the limited express), one night, then over the pass to Beppu for the second, and back to Hakata by the Sonic limited express in about two hours. The mountain loop: highway bus to Kurokawa, one night, then down to Aso or across to Kumamoto.
With one night and little appetite for transfers, Takeo or Ureshino is the answer. Takeo is hot at source, 45 °C and up, and about an hour from Hakata by train.
Trying to see Beppu, Yufuin and Kurokawa on the same trip in two nights is possible and exhausting, because Kurokawa is a separate mountain journey from the other two. Pick two of the three.
Things not to do
Do not assume the onsen in your Fukuoka hotel is the same experience as the mountain towns. Near the city, the source water is usually cool and heated before it reaches the bath.
Do not plan to bathe in Beppu's hells. They are too hot, and they are a sightseeing route.
Do not arrive in Kurokawa late in the evening expecting to use the 入湯手形 pass. Each inn sets its own hours for visitors, and some stop taking them well before night.
Do not leave your bus seat to chance. Highway buses to Kurokawa and Yufuin fill up at weekends and in autumn.
New to this? Start with how an onsen stay actually works. Wondering why some water is cloudy and some is clear? See sulfur onsen and reading the water sign. For the rest of the country, see where Japan's hot springs actually are.