Oita City Japan Oita
Frequently Asked Questions
Ships berth in the bay, a few kilometres from downtown. A shuttle or taxi covers the distance in minutes. The centre is laid out around the remains of Funai Castle.
Two directions, and you have to choose. Either the city: the Funai Castle moats, the covered shopping arcades and the OPAM art museum. Or nature: the macaques of Mount Takasaki and the Umitamago aquarium. Trying to add Beppu on top makes the day too tight.
The stone walls, the moats and two rebuilt turrets still trace the outline of feudal power. A quiet half-hour walks the moats in the shade of the pines, and the cherry trees draw the whole city there in spring.
Yes, if only for the building. Pritzker laureate Shigeru Ban designed it in 2015: a woven-wood facade inspired by local bamboo basketry, opening entirely onto the street, with light filtering through cedar louvres. The hall and atrium are free to enter.
At Mount Takasaki, about ten kilometres towards Beppu. More than a thousand Japanese macaques live free in its forests and come down daily to the park esplanade, a habit formed in the 1950s. You watch them from a few metres away, with no fencing.
Yes, ten minutes by train. Beppu is Japan's hot spring capital, and its steam plumes rise between the buildings like giant campfires. The volcanic hells are visited on a circuit, the public baths are for soaking. Watch the time on the way back.
You lie down on the beach and staff bury you under geothermally heated sand, facing the bay. The warmth builds slowly, the session is short, and it is one of the most Japanese memories the call can offer.
The nearby Bungo Channel supplies two fish whose names travel across Japan: seki saba, mackerel line-caught in the currents, and seki aji, horse mackerel with delicate fat, both served as sashimi. The local toriten, chicken tempura, and the prefecture's mandarins round out a generous table.
No. It is a prefectural capital of nearly half a million people where you see more office workers than cruise passengers. You move around easily and eat remarkably well, without the crowds of the major ports.
In the sixteenth century the city was called Funai, and its lord Otomo Sorin, a Christian convert, made it one of Japan's doors to the West: the first European physicians, the first Western musical instruments, trade in silks. Portuguese carracks already knew this Kyushu shore.
