Kyuhachi

The 九州八十八湯 (Kyushu 88) is one of Japan's great bathing challenges: soak in 88 hot springs across Kyushu, from grand old Beppu bathhouses to mountain baths with no signal and no signage in English.

Kyuhachi puts the whole challenge in one app. Every eligible onsen (around 155 of them) with its hours, prices, access and spring quality. A map that shows what's near you. A stamp book that fills as you go. In English and Japanese, and all of it works offline.

It is a personal, fan-made app, not affiliated with the 九州八十八湯 organisation or 88onsen.com.

EVERY ONSEN IN ONE PLACE No more tabs and screenshots. Each onsen page carries the address, phone number, opening hours, admission fee and spring quality, kept in sync with the official listings. Search the catalog, browse by prefecture, heart your favorites.

SEE WHAT'S NEAR YOU Open the map and pick your next bath by where you actually are, not by where the guidebook thinks you'll be. In a valley with no bars, the map, the list and every detail page still open: the catalog lives on your phone.

A BOOK THAT FILLS UP Every visit presses a stamp into your Spaport. Log the date, the price, how you got there, a photo, or just tick the onsen off and get back in the water. Pages fill in the order you bathe, so by stamp 88 the book is the story of the trip.

PICK YOUR RULES Do it by car, by public transport, by bicycle, or entirely on foot. Each is its own challenge with its own bronze, silver and gold tiers, and every bath you log moves you up the rank ladder from 見習い to 泉人.

BRING YOUR OWN ROUTE Planning the trip in another app? Import the GPS track (.gpx, .kml, .tcx), attach it to a challenge, and see which onsens sit along the line. Finder then looks ahead on the route for convenience stores, supermarkets, roadside stations, campsites and hotels, so the next stop is sorted before you need it.

AREA GUIDES Short reads on the onsen regions of Kyushu: the local food, the produce worth carrying home, the sights, and the history behind the water. Enough to tell you whether the detour is worth it.

THE NUMBERS Pace and a projected finish date, prefectures covered, visits over time, how you travelled, what you have spent and what finishing will cost, and how you rated every bath along the way.

WORKS WHERE THERE'S NO SIGNAL Record the visit at the door, signal or not. It syncs the next time you're connected.

ENGLISH AND JAPANESE The whole app follows your device language. Onsen names stay in the original Japanese, with readings alongside so you can say them out loud when asking for directions.

YOUR RECORDS STAY YOURS Your visits, photos and notes are yours alone; no other user ever sees them. No ads, no analytics, no tracking. Delete your account any time, from inside the app, and everything goes with it.

Free, with no in-app purchases.

Onsen information comes from 88onsen.com and is provided as is. Details change, especially in small places, so please confirm opening hours, prices and access with the onsen before you travel. Kyuhachi is an independent app and has no connection to the 九州八十八湯 organisation or to 88onsen.com.