Kyushu is the southernmost of Japan's four main islands, and the one that feels least like the rest of the country. Volcanoes still smoke here, hot springs steam from every other hillside, and centuries of trade with China, Korea, and the early Europeans have left a layer of foreign influence you will not find on Honshu. It is greener, warmer, and more relaxed — a place where Japan turns its back on Tokyo and looks south.
The northern gateway is Fukuoka, Kyushu's largest city and one of the most liveable in Japan. Fukuoka invented tonkotsu ramen — the rich, milky pork-bone broth now eaten across the world — and Hakata gyoza, smaller and crisper than the Tokyo version, are best eaten standing up at one of the yatai food stalls that line the riverbank after dark. To the west, Nagasaki curves around a deep harbour that for two centuries was Japan's only window to the outside world; the Dutch trading post of Dejima, the old Chinese quarter, and the Atomic Bomb Museum together make it the most layered city on the island.
The centre of Kyushu belongs to the volcanoes. Mount Aso, with one of the largest active calderas in the world, dominates the interior — its grasslands, hot springs, and sulphurous craters are best explored on foot or by rental car. South of Aso, Kumamoto is famous for its great black castle, slowly rebuilding after the 2016 earthquakes, and for basashi (raw horse sashimi). Further north, Beppu in Oita Prefecture produces more hot spring water than anywhere else in Japan; its "hells" — boiling pools of vivid blue, red, and grey — are a kitschy spectacle, but the town is full of quiet bathhouses where a soak costs a few hundred yen.
Off the southern coast lies Yakushima, an almost perfectly round island of dense, ancient forest. Its yakusugi — gnarled cedars several thousand years old — inspired Studio Ghibli's Princess Mononoke and form the centrepiece of a UNESCO-listed wilderness that is one of the wettest places in Japan and one of the best for serious hiking. Together with the active volcanoes of Sakurajima and Kirishima, and the southern hot-spring town of Ibusuki where you bathe buried in hot black sand, Kyushu's southern half rewards travellers willing to slow down.
Destinations in Kyushu
Fukuoka Nagasaki Kumamoto Beppu Oita Miyazaki Kitakyushu Yoron
