You’ve landed at Oita Airport — now what? It’s a small regional airport with no train station of its own, so your options come down to three real choices: the airport limousine bus, a taxi, or picking up a rental car on the spot. Here’s how they actually compare.

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Option	To Beppu	To Yufuin	To Oita City
Airport bus (Air Liner)	~51 min, ¥1,500	~55 min, ¥1,550	~53–65 min, ¥1,550
Taxi	~45–60 min, ¥11,410	~60 min, ¥15,100	~60 min, ¥13,400
Rental car (self-drive)	~45 min, ¥6,500/day	~55 min, ¥6,500/day	~60 min, ¥6,500/day

The airport bus: cheapest way to reach a single base

The Air Liner bus is the most economical option if you’re headed straight to one town and staying car-free once you’re there. Six or more direct departures run daily to Beppu, Yufuin, and Oita City, and the fare is flat regardless of how far you’re going within that range. The tradeoff is obvious: once you’re off the bus, you’re on foot, taxis, or local transit for the rest of the trip — workable if you’re basing yourself in Beppu or Yufuin itself, much less workable if you want to reach the spots we cover on this site, most of which aren’t on a bus route at all.

Taxi: fine for groups, expensive solo

A taxi from Oita Airport to Beppu runs roughly ¥11,410, more to Yufuin or Oita City. Split four ways with a full group and it’s actually competitive with the bus; solo or as a couple, it’s a rough deal unless you’re arriving very late and just want to get to your hotel without thinking. We wouldn’t plan around a taxi as anything more than a late-night backup option.

Rental car: the only option that actually opens up the rest of Oita

At around ¥6,500 a day, a rental car costs roughly the same as one taxi ride to Beppu — except it’s good for your entire trip, not just the airport transfer, and most of the driving in Oita avoids expensive expressway tolls. Eight rental counters operate out of the arrival lobby (Toyota, Nippon, Times, Nissan, Budget, Orix, and local operators Kunisaki and Lion), so availability generally isn’t an issue even without an advance reservation, though booking ahead is still worth it in peak season. You’ll need an International Driving Permit before you land — Japan doesn’t accept a standalone foreign license — which we cover in full in our Yamanami Highway guide, along with why a car is close to essential for reaching most of what’s on this site.

Read the Yamanami Highway & rental car guide →

For comparing rental rates across several of the airport’s counters at once, DiscoverCars aggregates most of the major chains in one search.

What about the train?

Skip it. Oita Airport has no station of its own — the nearest, Kitsuki, is itself a roughly 30-minute taxi ride away, and you’d still need to transfer from there. For an airport this small, it’s not a realistic option.

Bottom line

If you’re staying car-free in a single town, take the bus. If you’re traveling as a group of three or four and just need to reach your first hotel, a taxi is reasonable. For everyone else — anyone planning to see more than one or two towns, or anything off the main bus routes — the rental car pays for itself by day two. See our car-free feasibility guide if you’re still deciding which camp you’re in.