Beppu and its hells

The jigoku, or "hells", are the springs you look at rather than enter: Umi Jigoku is cobalt blue from iron sulphate, Chinoike Jigoku blood red from iron oxide, and Tatsumaki Jigoku is a geyser that erupts every thirty to forty minutes. The circuit, organised as early as the 1910s, made Beppu Japan’s first mass spa resort. The town also produces yuno-hana, a mineral deposit scraped from thatched roofs built over the fumaroles and sold as bath salts.