Set your travel planning to autopilot and — if you are in northern Kyushu in need of the thermal succor only a hot-spring bath can lend — you are sure to be drawn by the gravitational pull of Beppu, the brash town in Oita Prefecture that is the onsen king of Japan and knows it.
But wise travelers in search of a more serene bathing experience, combined with a proximity to nature that's consigned to Beppu's distant past, will set the controls full speed ahead to a place not so far up the road. They will head for Yufuin.
Presided over by the twin peaks of 1,584-meter Yufudake, Yufuin is a mere 25 km from Beppu, but a world apart. Where Beppu lies beside a bay of the same name that forms one of the western arms of the Seto Inland Sea and is well used to catering to tourist hordes, Yufuin sits in an upland basin 450 meters above sea level and is blessed with a stunning backdrop of thickly forested mountains.