Come Away with Me

A Tour of Hell (別府地獄巡り)

I don't know about you but i always feel a little disconcerted whenever I have to blog about something and relate the events as if they just happened not too long ago, when in fact all these actually took place quite some time back. I hope you are fine with the way I will be bringing up the past in the next few weeks or so.

So if you would (actually you don't have much of a choice!) do travel back in time with me to 26th March 2007, the morning after we checked out of our little Japanese inn.

As we were scheduled to leave for Osaka that very same day in the evening on board an overnight ferry, what better plan than to make use of the extra half day to embark on a 'tour of hell' in the town of Beppu, located merely a half hour drive away.

I believe, for some, that the name Beppu (別府)already rings a bell, no? You are right in thinking that isn't this the name of some Japanese eateries we have at home?Whereas the images of bowls of spicy ramen may come to the minds of many Singaporeans, Beppu is associated in all Japanese minds with only one thing: hot springs. (Yes, i know you must be thinking you have had enough of hot springs stories for a while but i promise this is not another of those entry about me wearing yukata and posing with more delicious-looking but not that great-tasting food!).

Simply put it, Beppu is Japan's onsen capital, producing the one of the largest volume of hot water in the world. Now, there are 2 kinds of onsen in Beppu. There are the ones for bathing (such as the ones we went to in Kumamoto and Yufuin) and there are the ones for viewing. The latter is what made Beppu famous as a tourist destination and they are collectively know as ‘the 9 Hells of Beppu'. These are really 9 geothermal spots around the city that produce high-temperature spring water and forms one of the major ‘highlights’ of any Beppu sightseeing program. And thus born the famous Beppu tourism jingle: jigoku meguri(地獄巡り)in Japanese, literally translating into ‘Hell Tour’.

Sad to say, to me, Beppu proves to be a disappointing, overly commercialized and touristy city. Naturally occurring hot spring sources are thus rounded up to become tourist attractions and charge a hefty ￥400 for each entry. There is a discount ticket (think it cost about ￥2000 if i am not wrong)if you purchase the whole package which means a tour of all 9 of the hot springs but trust me after a few of them, you would have had enough of hell touring for the day.

So anyway, as a tourist of course we had to do touristy things right. The truth was if you are not in another Japanese inn enjoying a hot bath, there is nothing really of much interest to do in the city. Instead of visiting all 9, we went to 4 which are supposedly the more happening ones.

The first hell we visited is called the oniishibozu jigoku or the 'shaven head monks' hell. This spring produces muddy bubbles which was thought to resemble a monk's head and thus the name. Aside from some murky ponds, my memory from this place is just the overpowering smell of sulphur.

We proceeded to umi jigoku or the 'sea hell' which as the name might suggests, display boiling hot blue water. This hell is slightly better than the last one. It is located inside a pretty nicely maintained park and so the viewing lasted 5 min while the wandering and phototaking took 30min.(Note: If you look carefully, notice the rod with a basket dipping into the pond at the bottom right corner? It is used to cook hard-boiled eggs or what the locals called onsen tamago (温泉卵)).

Next up a tour of chinoike jigoku or the 'blood pond hell'. We were told that there are days that the pond water appear much redder and do look quite a bit like blood but what we witnessed that day looked just like any other ordinary muddish puddle.

Last up was the tatsumaki jigoku or 'tornado hell' which is a geyser that sprouts water every 30 minutes. I can't even quite remember why i paid money to see a waterspout anymore, gah.





Well at least now when people mentioned about a tour of hell in Beppu, I won't have to be curious about it anymore and wonder if i had missed out some exciting spots in my backyard (I am a Kyushu JET after all). The most enjoyable bit of the whole afternoon was perhaps eating hard-boiled egg cooked by the hot spring water and the lovely garden which we took what is one of my favorite picture of our whole travel. :)

posted by テレサ @ 3:15 PM