Oita Hidden Gems

Oita discharges more hot-spring water than any other prefecture and has more individual sources, and Beppu is where that becomes visible rather than merely pleasant: steam rises from drains and hillsides across the town, and the so-called hells are pools too hot to bathe in, kept as things to look at. The bathing itself covers everything from sand burial on the beach to mud and steam baths, and the town's public baths cost a few hundred yen. Yufuin, twenty minutes inland, took the opposite approach and developed as a low-rise resort of galleries and small inns under Mt. Yufu. The prefecture's other layer is much older: the Kunisaki peninsula was a centre of mountain Buddhism fused with Shinto, and its stone Buddhas and cliff carvings are scattered across farmland and hillsides with no ticket office in sight. Usa Jingu is the head shrine of the tens of thousands of Hachiman shrines nationwide.