Beppu sits on the east coast of Kyushu and produces more hot spring water than any other city in Japan, and the second most of any site on earth after Yellowstone. Over 2,000 vents feed the town. Steam rises out of drains, between houses, off hillsides, and on a cold morning the whole city looks like it is smouldering. The eight Jigoku, the hells, are springs too hot to bathe in and are viewed rather than entered, one of them a cobalt blue pool at 98°C.
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This is a bathing town, and that single fact drives the packing list more than the weather does. You will undress completely in front of strangers several times a day, because that is how a Japanese onsen works, and what you bring has to accommodate that rather than resist it.
What Makes Beppu Different to Pack For
You bathe naked, and there is no way around it
Japanese public baths are nude and gender segregated. Swimwear is not permitted in a traditional onsen and wearing it marks you out as someone who has not read anything. You are given or you rent a small modesty towel, roughly the size of a hand towel, which you carry but do not put in the water.
The washing stations come first: you sit on a low stool, soap and rinse completely, and only then get into the bath. The water is shared and nobody wants your soap in it.
Tattoos are a genuine obstacle
Many Beppu onsen still refuse entry to anyone with visible tattoos, because of the historic association with organised crime. This is not universal and it is loosening, but it is common enough that it will shape your trip. Options are cover patches for small tattoos, the growing number of tattoo friendly baths, and private family baths, the kazokuburo, which you rent by the hour and which solve the problem completely.
Kyushu weather, milder and wetter than Honshu
Summer runs 24°C to 32°C and is very humid, with a June and July rainy season and a typhoon risk from August into September. Winter is mild, 3°C to 12°C, and it rarely snows in the town. A merino wool base layer for women is the right winter layer here, and it handles the sweat of a humid summer without going sour, which matters because you will be in and out of hot water all day.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
The Beppu Packing List
Footwear
Slip on shoes, and this is the most useful single decision you can make in Japan generally and Beppu specifically. Shoes come off at ryokan entrances, at temples, at many restaurants and at every bath house. Laces become a small misery by the fourth time. If you are walking the Tsurumi ridge or up Mount Yufu at Yufuin, waterproof hiking shoes are right for volcanic scree and wet clay.
Bring more socks than you think. You will be barefoot or in socks constantly and tatami floors are unforgiving of holes.
Clothing
Light layers and something easy to take on and off. If you are staying in a ryokan, a yukata is provided and is worn to dinner, around the inn and often out to the nearby baths, which removes a lot of the wardrobe problem.
Japan dresses modestly and neatly. Shoulders covered is the norm, shorts are less common on adults than in the West, and visible cleavage is uncommon, though nobody will say anything.
For the baths
A quick drying towel, though most places rent them. A hair tie, because long hair must be kept out of the water. A waterproof bag for the wet towel afterwards. Contact lens users should bring glasses, since steam and hot water and lenses are a bad combination over a long day.
Leave jewellery at the hotel; silver tarnishes black almost instantly in sulphur water.
For rain and typhoon season
A packable rain jacket from June through September. Japan is an umbrella culture and cheap clear plastic ones are sold everywhere, so an umbrella is the easier answer for a city day and a jacket is right for the hills.
Practical
Cash, because Beppu is less card friendly than Tokyo and many small baths take coins only. A coin purse genuinely helps. An IC card such as Suica or Icoca works on the local buses.
What to Wear at Key Sites
The Jigoku, the hells
Eight springs, seven of them in two clusters at Kannawa and Shibaseki, too hot for bathing and presented as an attraction. Umi Jigoku is cobalt blue, Chinoike Jigoku is red with iron oxide, and Tatsumaki Jigoku is a geyser on a roughly half hourly cycle.
Practically: a combined ticket covers all eight and the two clusters are a bus ride apart, so this is a half day rather than an hour. Paths are paved and easy. The steam fogs glasses and camera lenses constantly and the sulphur smell gets into clothing.
The sand bath at Beppu Kaihin Sunayu
You put on a provided yukata, lie in a trench on the beach, and attendants bury you to the neck in sand heated by the springs below. You stay about ten minutes.
Practically: the yukata is provided and worn over nothing, you shower afterwards, and sand gets into hair regardless. It is genuinely hot and ten minutes is the limit for good reason.
The eight onsen districts
Beppu Hatto are the eight bathing areas, each with a different water chemistry. Kannawa is the steamiest and most atmospheric, with public steam cooking ovens where you can cook eggs and vegetables in the vents. Myoban is up the hill and produces yunohana, the mineral crystals harvested from thatched huts. Takegawara in the centre is a grand 1879 bath house and one of the cheapest and best experiences in the city.
Practically: many of the small municipal baths cost only a couple of hundred yen, have no English signage, and are used by local residents. Go quietly, wash thoroughly, and follow whoever is already there.
Mount Tsurumi and Yufuin
A ropeway climbs Mount Tsurumi for the view over the bay, and Yufuin, half an hour inland, is a smaller and more polished onsen town below the twin peaks of Mount Yufu.
Practically: the summit is exposed and considerably colder than the coast, with snow in winter. Yufuin is a walkable day trip and much more crowded than Beppu with day visitors.
What Not to Bring
Leave swimwear for the onsen, where it is not allowed. Leave silver jewellery, which the sulphur will ruin. Leave a suitcase you cannot lift, since Japanese stations have stairs and Beppu's older ryokan have no lifts.
Leave the expectation that you can skip the washing stations, and leave any plan to photograph inside a bath house, where phones and cameras are prohibited without exception.
Essential Resources for Women in Beppu
Emergency numbers in Japan: police 110, ambulance and fire 119. Both take English with a delay while an interpreter is connected. The Japan Visitor Hotline, run by the national tourism organisation, is +81 50 3816 2787 and operates 24 hours in English, Chinese and Korean.
Tourist support: Japan has no separate tourist police, but koban, the small neighbourhood police boxes, are everywhere and are the normal first stop for a lost item or a problem. Japanese police take lost property extremely seriously and recovery rates are high. A stolen passport needs a police report before the consulate can act.
US Embassy and consulate: the embassy is in Tokyo at 1-10-5 Akasaka, Minato ku, telephone +81 3 3224 5000, at jp.usembassy.gov. The consulate covering Kyushu is the US Consulate Fukuoka, 2-5-26 Ohori, Chuo ku, around two hours from Beppu by train. Enrol in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program at step.state.gov before you travel.
Main hospital or clinic: Beppu Medical Center and Oita Prefectural Hospital in Oita city, twenty minutes away, are the main facilities with emergency departments. English is limited outside the largest hospitals, so a translation app and your insurance details in writing are genuinely useful. Japan has no reciprocal health agreement with most countries and treatment is billed in full, so travel insurance is essential.
Official health authority: the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare at mhlw.go.jp.
US State Department travel advisory for Japan: current advisory level and detail. Read it directly rather than relying on this page.
UK FCDO travel advice for Japan: entry requirements, safety and health guidance.
Official tourism authority: the Japan National Tourism Organization at japan.travel, with the Beppu city tourism association at beppu-tourism.com for bath house opening hours, the hells combined ticket and which onsen currently admit tattooed visitors.
Solo women safety assessment: Japan is among the safest countries in the world for a woman travelling alone and Beppu is a quiet provincial city within it. Violent crime against visitors is very rare, theft is rare enough that people leave bags on cafe tables to reserve them, and walking alone at night is normal and unremarkable. Eating alone is completely standard and many restaurants have counter seating designed for it. The bathing culture, which is the thing most visitors are nervous about, is in practice relaxed, matter of fact and entirely non sexual, and the women's baths are a female space in a way that is genuinely comfortable once the first five minutes are over. The real cautions are specific and worth knowing. Groping on crowded trains is a documented problem in Japan, less so in Beppu than in the big cities, and women only carriages exist on some services at peak times. Alcohol related nuisance in the entertainment districts is the other, and Beppu has a small red light area near the station that is easily avoided. Practically, the hazards here are thermal rather than criminal: the water in some baths is genuinely hot at 42°C and above, dehydration and fainting are common, and alcohol before bathing is a bad idea. Drink water between baths, do not stay in longer than you are comfortable, and be careful on wet tile, which causes more injuries than anything else in an onsen town.
Reading On
Beppu is the best introduction to onsen culture in Japan and the easiest place to get over the initial awkwardness of it. The Japan travel guide for women is the parent for the whole country and covers the regions, the seasons and the rail passes, and the Japan packing list for women covers a multi region trip. On Kyushu, the Fukuoka packing list for women covers the island's main city and usual arrival point and the Nagasaki packing list for women covers the west coast. On Honshu, the Hiroshima travel guide for women and the Miyajima packing list for women are the next stop east, and the Kyoto travel guide for women and Hakone packing list for women, the other great onsen area, sit further along the line. The travel packing guide for women is the parent for all destinations. For why merino is the right fibre in a humid bathing town, where you sweat, soak and cool a dozen times a day, the best merino wool base layers for women explains the fibre, and the Roman Trail collection is where the tops themselves live.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
