I closed my trip to Kyushu with a visit to the bathing resort town of Beppu.
Far and away the best thing about this hot spring heaven was the recorded voice at the train station. All of the stations I have been to in Japan have a boring old recording that plays something like, "Tokyo - Tokyo desu. Tokyo - Tokyo desu" upon arrival. Beppu Station, on the other hand, has an incredibly comic recording where the female voice goes, "Beppuuuuu! Beppuuuuu!" as your train doors open. The exaggerated "uuuuu" sound made me chuckle every time.
Unfortunately, that was probably the highlight of my time in Beppu.
I would not describe Beppu as an attractive city. In fact, it is fairly rundown and dingy looking on the outside. But, that need not dissuade people from visiting, since most of one's time will likely be spent submerged in a pool of hot water.
Beppu has two main types of baths - those that are for looking and those that are for soaking. The looking variety are called the "Jigoku" or Hells. The Hells were once natural hot springs, but they have been so elaborately decorated that they now resemble miniature amusement parks. For me, they were the biggest tourist trap I have visited in Japan thus far.
On the other side of the spectrum are the onsen / hot springs meant for bathing. Beppu boasts over 100 different bathing establishments. These run the gamut from large modern buildings with multiple pools, to small, family-run operations.
My most memorable "small" onsen experience was at a place that didn't even provide any wooden stools to sit on while cleaning yourself. I had to sit on the tile floor in front of a spigot and try awkwardly to clean those parts of my body not in direct contact with the floor. This proved more difficult than expected, considering that I had to share the spigot with an obese naked Japanese man, whose distended stomach severely encroached on my cleaning area.
In Beppu, I learned that I am a two baths a day person. After two baths, I find that my body is both sufficiently clean and relaxed, not to mention the fact that my skin has already started to become the consistency of stewed tomatoes. However, with literally nothing else to do in Beppu but soak, I was taking upwards of four baths a day. Hardcore tub fanatics shuttle themselves from place to place in rental cars and are said to visit over six different baths per day. I'll leave that type of marathon bathing to the pros.
There are a number of exotic baths in Beppu as well. When faced with the decision of entering either the volcanic mud bath or the steaming hot sand bath, I chose the mud.
My entrance into the mud bath was a dramatic one. Having just stripped off all of my clothes and completed my preliminary rinsing, I walked up to the edge of the pool. As expected, the volcanic mud was thick and gray. Actually, it looked less like the brown mud puddles of my youth and more like the gray modeler's clay I remember fooling around with in elementary school art class.
I put one foot into the pool. As I put my weight on the leg now submerged in gray sludge, I found that I had in fact missed the stone entry staircase completely. I immediately fell forward and plunged spread eagle, face first into the volcanic mud. My knees rammed into the bottom of the shallow pool. In keeping with the mud theme, they had decided to line the bottom of the pool with dirt and loose rocks.
Thus, upon pulling myself out of the muck, my face, hair, and dignity covering white washcloth were all thoroughly soaked in mud, dirt and gravel bits. Moaning like a bear shot with a tranquilizer dart, I limped towards the edge of the pool, stubbing my big toe on the actual location of the staircase.
Once I rubbed the mud out of my eyes, I saw that the 10 Japanese bathers in the pool were all staring at me with fixed eyes. Everyone was completely silent. No one said a word. Not even a courtesy, "Are you OK?" Nothing. I trudged out of the pool in silence, mud dripping off my naked, broken body.
Despite keeping quiet, I'm sure all of those Japanese people went home that night and told their families about the amazing thing they witnessed at the mud bath.
After cleaning myself up, I reentered the mud. This time I was much more successful.
B.E.W.
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