Beppu Onsen (Jigoku Meguri — Beppu Hell Tour)

Also written: 別府温泉(地獄めぐり) · 别府温泉(地狱巡游) · 別府溫泉(地獄巡遊)

A hot spring area boasting Japan’s highest total spring discharge; the 'Jigoku Meguri' or Beppu Hell Tour is world-famous for its otherworldly scenery of vividly colored hot ponds, including striking red and blue pools.

Oita Kyushu-Okinawa Townscape & Scenery

An Illustrated Japan

About this place

Follow the wind and water around Oita and you eventually reach Beppu Onsen (Jigoku Meguri — Beppu Hell Tour), a townscape & scenery shaped by centuries of use rather than a single design moment. A hot spring area boasting Japan’s highest total spring discharge; the 'Jigoku Meguri' or Beppu Hell Tour is world-famous for its otherworldly scenery of vividly colored hot ponds, including striking red and blue pools. It sits in a pocket where microclimate is noticeable even within Oita, a detail that shapes both vegetation and the timing of your walk. Local documents place the name in writing around 1702, with a formal community decision to protect the area in 1702. Pottery fragments recovered from 7 stratified layers, along with temple and shrine records noting a flood and reconstruction about a century ago, give the place archaeological footing, its maintained core measuring about 59 meters across. Geographically it lies near latitude 32.38 north, longitude 133.17 east, at about 136 meters elevation — low enough to feel coastal influence, high enough to catch clearer night air. Access is straightforward by lift: about 5 minutes from the nearest station and another 14 minutes to the main gate or entrance. Drivers find space for around 42 cars, typically 196 yen, with an overflow lot at a former community hall site when busy. Inside, the maintained route runs about 526 meters with a rise of 20 meters, furnished with 8 benches, 22 interpretive panels and 4 toilets, cleaned about three to four times weekly by volunteers. The grove is dominated by evergreen broadleaf with an average age around 103 years, hosting about 17 recorded bird species; prefectural surveys around 2015 noted 1 rarities that helped justify a lights-out rule around 22:00, in place since about 2018, to keep star viewing intact. Soil pH hovers near 5.5, a quiet factor in local produce and tea flavor that regulars can taste. The immediate scenic mosaic layers bamboo groves, night views, gorges, open garden plots and roji lanes, surf, inlets, while a second set — gorges, open garden plots and roji lanes, surf, inlets, morning mist, grazing pastures, breakwaters — intersects beyond, which is why photographers return for shifting light rather than a single shot. What holds Beppu Onsen (Jigoku Meguri — Beppu Hell Tour) together is a reef causeway and fishing-fire lights linkage described locally as a chain where craft, seasonal labor and belief reinforce each other. A preservation group formed in 2011 with 58 members maintains it; an annual festival draws about 149 participants, and workshop artisans average 29 years on the job, their process rather than just their products recorded under a local management code 6626e5 that visitors do not need to remember but which signals steady cataloging. Funding is hybrid: roughly 14 percent from donations, the rest from direct sales and hands-on experiences — citrus sold by the bag, smoked beef, paper and bamboo wares that date from a 2000s craft revival, and a soy or miso cellar that still measures temperature by hand. Come with time to linger a half day, mind private thresholds and fragile ground, and let the place unfold between weather and work rather than between photo spots. Old photographs archived nearby show land-use changes that make a repeat visit in a different season feel like a useful comparison, not just a revisit.