A town that breathes
Beppu produces more hot-spring water than anywhere in Japan, and Kannawa is where the production is least polite: the district sits on ground too hot for ordinary plumbing, so for centuries people simply built their lives around the steam. They cook with it: jigoku-mushi, hell-steaming, vegetables and eggs lowered into the earth's own pressure cooker. They cure with it: the old toji boarding houses, where farmers once wintered for weeks of therapeutic soaking, still rent rooms with kitchens and a house steam-pot.
The "hells" (jigoku) are the springs too violent to bathe in, kept as paid spectacles for generations. The sea hell is cobalt blue at 98 degrees; the blood pond is red with dissolved iron, and the old names don't soften any of it. Most scenes on this list take some effort to reach. Kannawa takes one train and a city bus, and you can navigate the last stretch by the smell of sulfur and steamed pudding. Hence the Lv.2 rating, the easiest we've given any scene here.
