Beppu

A combined ticket covers all seven and is good for two days. Five of them sit close enough in Kannawa to walk between. The blood pond and the geyser are three kilometres off and need a bus or a car.

A wooden public bath open since 1879, and the sand burial is the reason to come. Places are limited, so you take a number at the desk; weekends run past an hour. The yukata is included, the towel usually rented separately.

Inside the thatched huts, mineral crystals grow out of the steam and are scraped off by hand. The method is more than three hundred years old and protected as folk heritage. A sulphur bath sits at the back of the site.

You buy the ingredients and put them into a steam vent yourself, then watch the clock: five minutes for shellfish, twenty-five for sweet potato. The steamer itself is rented by the block of time.

Ten minutes to 1,300 metres, and the whole bay opens up at the top. Thousands of cherry trees flower on the lower slopes in spring; the summit ices over in winter. Wind shuts the cable.

Wild macaque troops come down the mountain to feed and then go back up. There are two troops, taking turns by time slot. The staff repeat one rule at the gate: do not meet their eyes.

Directly opposite the monkey mountain, with a joint ticket for both. One section puts you close to walruses and seals with no glass between. The rooftop show is staged against the bay.

People come for the waterfall bath that drops out of the ceiling, in a bath house running since 1922. Hours run from nine in the morning to one at night. The private family baths are first come, never booked.

Steam rises from the drains in every lane. In winter it is thick enough to blur the view. A few inns still rent rooms with a kitchen, the way long-stay bathers used them. Signs warn you off the vents underfoot.

A hillside amusement park from 1929, reached by its own cable car. The ferris wheel and the duck race have been there for decades. Many ride up for the bay view rather than the rides.

A mountain onsen village roughly an hour's bus ride from Beppu, Mount Yufu behind it. Lake Kinrin, fed by hot springs from its bed, steams with mist on cool early mornings. Craft and snack shops line Yunotsubo street, which links station and lake.

Every Hachiman shrine in Japan answers to this one, and its vermilion sanctuary is a National Treasure. Here you clap four times when praying, not the usual two. Allow about an hour from Beppu by JR, then a long forest walk up to the hilltop hall.

More than 60 Buddhas carved into rock faces from the late Heian into the Kamakura period. In 1995 they became the first cliff carvings named a National Treasure. The head of the great Dainichi, long fallen to the ground, was set back on its body in 1994.

A footbridge 390m long, slung 173m above a gorge in the Kuju mountains. Mid-span you look down on Shindo Falls, and the gaps in the deck show the valley below. Strong wind sets it swaying, and autumn leaf season brings the biggest crowds.