Nagasaki, the onsen towns, and the art islands of the Inland Sea

Arrive Fukuoka

Fukuoka’s airport is unusually close to its own city centre, which means the transfer is a matter of minutes and the first evening survives a long flight. Nothing is scheduled.

If you can stay upright: the yatai, the open-fronted food stalls that are wheeled onto the pavements along the Naka river after dark and taken away before morning. Eight seats, a curtain, one cook. It is the single best argument for beginning a Japanese journey here rather than in Tokyo.

Fukuoka and Dazaifu

Dazaifu is half an hour out and was the seat of government for the whole of western Japan for several centuries. The shrine there is dedicated to the god of learning, so the crowd is largely students and their parents, and the approach is lined with shops selling one grilled rice cake and nothing else.

Back in the city for the afternoon: Shofuku-ji, which was the first Zen temple founded in Japan, and the merchant streets of Hakata. Then the part of Fukuoka that matters, which is dinner. This is the city that invented tonkotsu ramen and it has strong views about it.

West to Nagasaki

Most of the morning on the train, with one change. Nagasaki appears as a harbour wedged into steep hills, built up the slopes in tiers, and it does not look Japanese from the water.

The afternoon is the Atomic Bomb Museum and the Peace Park above it. Hiroshima is the name the world knows; Nagasaki was the second city and the last, and its museum is smaller, quieter and in some ways harder. We keep the rest of the day clear afterwards, because handing someone a dinner reservation an hour later is not the right way to end that afternoon.

Nagasaki: two hundred years of the only open door

Dejima in the morning: the fan-shaped artificial island in the harbour where Dutch traders were confined, and through which every foreign idea entering Japan had to pass while the country was closed. It has been reconstructed building by building and it explains more Japanese history per square metre than anywhere else in the country.

Then the hillside above the harbour: Glover Garden, Oura church, and the Chinese quarter, which is not a tourist confection but the residue of a real trading community. Evening on Mount Inasa, reached by ropeway, for the harbour in the dark.

If the sea is calm and you want it, the boat to Hashima — the abandoned coal-mining island — runs from the harbour and lands only in good conditions. It is cancelled often. We book it as a bonus, never as a plan.

Across Kyushu to Kurokawa Onsen

East across the island, with a stop at Kumamoto and its castle, still being rebuilt stone by stone after the earthquakes and open along a raised walkway that puts you at the level of the repairs. It is the rare case of a building site being more interesting than the finished thing.

Then up into the mountains. Kurokawa is thirty-odd inns along a wooded stream, with no neon, no chain shops and a village association that has spent decades refusing them. You arrive in the afternoon, change into a yukata, and the day stops.

Aso, and the water

Mount Aso holds one of the largest volcanic calderas in the world and there are towns, roads and rice fields living inside it. The morning is the crater rim and the grasslands, subject to the gas readings at the summit, which are published daily and occasionally close the last stretch of road.

The afternoon is the reason to be here. Kurokawa sells a wooden tag that lets you into three of the village baths, and the baths are outdoors, on the stream, under trees. Nobody hurries. Dinner is served in your room or in a private dining room, course by course, and it is the best meal on this itinerary.

Kyushu to Hiroshima

Back down to Kumamoto and onto the Shinkansen north-east. Bags are forwarded ahead so the change at Hakata is a walk rather than a wrestle. Hiroshima by mid-afternoon.

The Peace Memorial Park takes what is left of the day: the dome left standing as it was, the cenotaph, and the museum, which was rebuilt to lead with personal objects rather than with argument. Two hours, and no dinner booked straight afterwards.

Miyajima, and a second day in Hiroshima

The ferry across in the morning. The torii stands in water at high tide and on wet sand at low, so we check the tide table when your dates are fixed and put you on the island for the better of the two. Above the shrine there is a ropeway and a walk to the summit of Misen, which most day-trippers never do because they are back on the two o’clock boat.

The afternoon is Hiroshima itself, which almost nobody gives a second look: the rebuilt castle, the Shukkeien garden, and okonomiyaki cooked on an iron plate in front of you, layered rather than mixed, which is the local argument with Osaka and one they are right about.

To Naoshima

Shinkansen east to Okayama, a local line down to the coast, and the ferry across the Inland Sea. The water here is flat, dotted with pine-topped islands, and looks more like a lake than a sea.

Naoshima was a fishing and smelting island in decline until a publishing house began putting museums on it. The buildings are set into the hillside and partly underground, several works are installed permanently in old village houses, and the whole island is designed to be walked or cycled between them. We plan the day around each site’s closing days, which are not the same for all of them and which catch out a great many independent visitors.

Naoshima, Himeji and Osaka

A last morning on the island — the Art House projects in the village, which are the pieces people remember longest — then the ferry back and east along the coast.

Himeji is on the line and it is the finest surviving castle in Japan: white, original, never burned, and steep inside. One thing to be ready for: since 1 March 2026 non-residents pay ¥2,500 to enter against ¥1,000 for residents of the city, with under-18s now free. That fee is inside your price, and dual pricing of this kind is being adopted at more Japanese sites, so it is worth knowing rather than discovering.

Osaka in the early evening, and the evening is for eating standing up.

Depart Osaka

Kansai airport sits on an artificial island about an hour from the centre and the road can be slow, so early departures start early. Bags forwarded from Hiroshima are waiting at the hotel.