Kamado Jigoku Onsen in Beppu
Last updated: August 26, 2026
Beppu's underworld at its most entertaining: Kamado Jigoku, the "Cooking Pot Hell", strings a half-dozen boiling pools along one steaming lane — each a different colour, from milk-blue to rust-orange, some shifting shade through the year — all guarded by a demon perched on a giant rice pot. This is the hands-on hell: warm your feet in the foot bath and your palms over the vents, inhale the mineral steam as the locals prescribe, and snack on eggs and pudding cooked by the earth itself. The name comes from rice once steamed here for shrine festivals; the theatrics are all Beppu.
Itinerary
- Stop at: Kamado Jigoku
Frequently Asked Questions
The 'hells' are Beppu's scalding volcanic springs — near boiling, made for viewing rather than bathing. Kamado Jigoku is the interactive one: hand and foot baths at safe temperatures, steam to inhale, and geothermal snacks, while the ponds themselves hiss and bubble decorative and untouchable.
Each pool's minerals and clay paint it differently — cobalt blue, cloudy white, rust orange — and one pond is famous for changing colour several times a year of its own accord. The six numbered 'kamado' pools make a compact tour of everything Beppu's underground can do.
The classics cooked by the spring itself: onsen eggs steamed in the vents, geothermal pudding, and corn or sweet potato from the steamers — washed down with the hell's own hot-spring drink. Half the fun of Kamado Jigoku is that this hell caters.
Kamado Jigoku sits in the Kannawa cluster with most of the other hells a short walk apart, so it slots naturally into the classic jigoku-meguri circuit — and if you only have time for one hell, this is the one that lets you touch, taste and breathe the experience rather than just look at it.