Spa resort town Beppu comes up with new attractive spots to entertain hot spring lovers

Feb. 27, 2015



Spa resort town Beppu comes up with new attractive spots to entertain hot spring lovers

Residents in Beppu, an internationally known spa resort, agree that the town owes its current prosperity to Kumahachi Aburaya, an early 20th century entrepreneur known as an idea man and a doer. Aburaya, who was good at advertising, launched Japan's first tourist bus service with charming young girls aboard as attendants, after refurbishing his hotel to a Western style one in 1924.
He also actively used the "onsen" spa logo mark and created an original catch copy, "Japan's three Number Ones. The best mountain is Fuji, the best sea is Setouchi and the best spa is Beppu." His innovative ideas contributed to disseminating the name of Beppu across Japan. Today, Beppu people are as active and innovative as the tourist industry legend in entertaining tourists with new attractive events and spots.
There are 12 courses of guided tours organized by local volunteers for a new herd of deep spa lovers, including night and gourmet spot tours. They take tourists to attractive locations, sometimes on the back streets, in the town's eight popular spa areas.
Another attractive project, which involves 88 selected hot spring baths in Beppu, calls for participants to try part or all of them one by one and have seals stamped on a booklet prepared for the tour at the baths they visited. When they accomplished all baths, they will be named an "onsen master" by the "Onsendo" project promoter, affiliated with the Beppu Tourist Association.
Onsen masters are awarded a black towel with a special logo as a token for the top rank, while blue, red, green and white towels are provided to other participants according to the numbers of hot spring baths they have tried.
At the top of the listed 88 hot spring baths is Takegawara Spa, a city-run facility which is housed in an 80-year-old wooden building and located in the busy Beppu Spa area.
Takegawara, which literally means "bamboo roof tiles," dates back to 1879, when the spa was opened near the sea shore for fishermen's families. Then, it became a bath for common use by local residents.
The two-story building with a high ceiling was registered as a cultural asset in 2004.
Takegawara was previously for residents only, but it is currently available for tourists, too. A woman at the reception kindly explains how to take a bath to unfamiliar visitors. "The temperature (of the bath) is sometimes 44 degrees centigrade, but it is 43 degrees today," she said. My wife had a chat with a young foreign woman  in the women's bath room. She introduced herself as a tourist from the Czech Republic and said, "I'll be back to Tokyo tomorrow to wind up a two-week tour of Japan."
When my wife referred to the names of famous spa areas in
Beppu, she appeared to be very much familiar with the spas in the town, among them Kannawa Spa. Asked whether it is not too hot, she replied smilingly, "No problem."
On an ally behind the Takegawara Spa building was Hirano Museum, an individually run museum with a collection of some 5,000 pieces of photos, posters, phonographic records and other materials about the town's history and culture. At the center of the main display room was a big photo of Aburaya, often called the revered old Mr. Kumahachi by local people.
He was a christian and went to the United States twice to study about tourism.  Standing beside his photo was a life-size picture of one of the female bus guides he recruited for the launch of the bus business.
Beppu, the second biggest city in Oita Prefecture, southwestern Japan, has a population of 125,000 and attracts more than eight million tourists a year.
Beppu and neighboring regions accommodate about 10 pct of Japan's 2,300 hot springs.
The eight major spa areas in Beppu boast of a daily output of hot water of 50,000 tons combined. In an attempt to demonstrate the attractiveness of the spas in Beppu and other areas, Oita Prefecture adopted the nickname "Onsen Prefecture" for its self in 2013.
Tourists, if lucky, may find a cute "onsen" logo mark registered by the prefecture at souvenir shops and other locations.
Of the hot spring baths in the popular Kannawa area, Hyotan (Japanese gourd) Spa has won a highest rating of three stars on the Michelin Guide. The spa boasts of an original spring water cooling system, which has made it possible to provide a 100 percent pure hot spring water by reducing the temperature of the water faster than ever, but with its rich ingredients intact.
The system is built with fine bamboo branches hung from an elevated wood trough, on which very hot water brought up from the spring source trickles down to be cooled to an appropriate temperature.
The actual cooling system is about 5 meters high, but a downsized model is placed in front of the entrance so that visitors can enjoy the facility as a foot bath. 
The "Yumetake" system, jointly developed by the spa operator and Oita Prefecture, is currently used at six facilities in Oita and Nagasaki prefectures.
The number of inbound tourists to Japan is on the increase in recent years, reflecting the government's policy of strengthening tourism as a growth industry and the yen's weakness against other currencies. But hot spring resorts in Japan are not necessarily successful in increasing tourists. This is partly because of diversifying tastes amid changes in social activities.
Beppu is more active than other spa resort towns, however. Its energetic effort to attract more tourists is expected to continue, as its people are willing to have more innovative ideas for the town.