Nakatsu Onsen Oita

Nakatsu Onsen Oita is a thermal facility in Nakatsu City on the Suonada coast of northern Oita Prefecture, a historic castle town of considerable cultural significance as the birthplace of Fukuzawa Yukichi, the Meiji-era intellectual, educator, and social reformer whose face appears on Japan's ten-thousand-yen banknote and whose liberal philosophy of independence, individualism, and the pursuit of Western learning through his celebrated Gakumon no Susume (Encouragement of Learning) helped shape modern Japanese civil society after the Meiji Restoration opened Japan to the world in 1868. Nakatsu Castle, one of three castles built by the daimyo Kuroda Yoshitaka in Kyushu, guards the historic coastal town whose legacy includes not only Fukuzawa's educational philosophy but also the distinctive yakitori cooking tradition that has made Nakatsu's grilled chicken restaurants among the most celebrated in all of Japan, rivaling the yakitori cultures of Tokyo and Osaka in the quality and refinement of its charcoal-grilled poultry preparations. The sodium-bicarbonate spring waters here offer therapeutic bathing in a city of exceptional historical and culinary character, where intellectual enlightenment, castle heritage, and yakitori culture combine in one of northern Kyushu's most rewarding and individually flavored historic castle town destinations.