Oita with preschoolers (4–6) 3 spots
Oita is a hot-spring prefecture where the ground itself steams. In Beppu whole streets give off vapor, the boiling colored ponds are for looking at rather than bathing, and you can steam your own lunch in the ground beside them.
African Safari (Kyushu Natural Zoological Park)
A safari park you drive through in your own car, past lions and elephants.
Stroller OK · Nursing room · checked Aug ’26
Beppu Jigoku Meguri (Hells of Beppu)
Seven pools of boiling spring water, from cobalt blue at 98C to a 105C geyser.
Nursing room · Changing table · Family restroom · checked Aug ’26
Tori-ten, Oita's fried chicken tempura, was born in this Chinese restaurant, open since 1926.
checked Aug ’26
From age four a child takes a seat of their own (1,500 yen) and holds the food out through the mesh themselves. The animals you feed are mouflon, American black bears, lions, fallow deer, Asian elephants and Bactrian camels, on a full 50-minute loop of the safari zone.Admission for children aged 4 to junior high is 1,500 yen, and the 1,500-yen Jungle Bus fare is on top of that (2,000 yen for the weekday-afternoon services you can book online). There are about 15 services on weekdays and about 30 at weekends and on holidays, the first at 9:10 and the last at 15:50 (15:20 from November to February); to catch the last one, arrive by 15:30 (15:00 in winter) and hope there is space. There are two boarding points, so go to the one you are told when you buy. The ride can shake and vibrate noticeably.
Tatsumaki Jigoku is a geyser, and the lamp above the sign at its entrance turns red when an eruption is close - a child can watch that lamp and wait it out. The seven are each a different color: cobalt blue at Umi, red at Chinoike, bluish white at Shiraike, grey boiling mud at Oniishibozu. The rest house Kobiri at Oniishibozu sells pudding steamed over the hell.The combined ticket is 2,400 yen for adults (high school and up) and 1,200 yen for children (elementary and junior high); the price list carries no individual rate for preschoolers, so ask at the ticket window of the first hell you enter. All seven are open 8:00-17:00, every day of the year.
This is the restaurant where tori-ten was born, and here you eat that dish. It opened in 1926, and the dish first appeared here in the early Showa years under the name 'chicken kamaboko tempura'. Plain, with kabosu squeezed over, or dipped in vinegar-soy - they choose for themselves how to flavour it.Lunch (11:00-15:30, last order 15:00) cannot be booked, so you queue at the desk. On busy days the wait is 30 minutes and the desk stops at 14:30, so arrive before 14:00 if you are coming for lunch. To book an evening course (6,600 / 8,800 / 11,000 yen per person, tax included) you need four adults or more, and you tell them by phone or in person two days ahead for the 6,600 and 8,800 courses, seven days ahead for the 11,000 one. The phone is answered most easily 16:00-17:00 and 21:00-22:00. Parking holds 60 cars; by bus, take Kamenoi bus route 24 (for Kannawa / APU) from Beppu Station or Kitahama, get off at Funakoji and walk five minutes.