Hotel New Tsuruta

Hotel New Tsuruta is a seafront hotel in Beppu's Kitahama district, built around a spring called Nijo-sen (二條泉), blended from two sources on the property and kept flowing as kakenagashi (掛け流し) rather than recirculated. The water is clear and faintly salty, and it leaves skin smooth after a soak; it's mild rather than sharp, and easy to sit in for a long soak. The main bath is on the sixth floor, twenty meters up, looking out over Beppu Bay, and staying guests can catch it early in the morning as the sun comes up over the water. There's also a small open-air bath, a sauna, and a shallower, cooler reclining-bath area for bathing with kids. The hotel opened in 1918 as a small wooden ryokan and was rebuilt in reinforced concrete partway through the Showa era; it has stayed on the same spot in Kitahama for more than a hundred years. It's an eight-minute walk from Beppu Station, near the old public bathhouse at Takegawara and the shops and bars along Kitahama's streets, and it's set up to send guests out into the neighborhood rather than keep them inside.