Volcanic Kyushu
One of the world's largest inhabited calderas, a ridge road between the fumaroles and a volcano dusting ash on the umbrellas of Kagoshima: Kyushu is the great geothermal south.
Suggested stay — 5 to 7 nights
Kyushu drives like a volcanology documentary: at its centre, the Mount Aso caldera — 25 km across, with villages and pastures inside the ancestral crater itself — unrolls the Kusasenri grasslands and, when the gases allow, access to the steaming Nakadake crater. You arrive via the Yamanami Highway from Beppu, 60 km of ridge road between golden grasslands and fumaroles, arguably Japan's most beautiful drive. Halfway along, Kurokawa Onsen hides its baths in a forested gorge: the wooden pass (tegata) opens three rotenburo of your choice, among the country's finest.
At the far south, Kagoshima lives face to face with Sakurajima, a volcano in near-permanent activity that greets the city with plumes of ash — locals keep dedicated umbrellas. The ferry (15 minutes, round the clock, cars welcome) lands you on the volcano-island: the Yunohira observatory, a torii gate buried by the 1914 eruption, feet in the hot sand. Add the Takachiho gorge and its emerald river between basalt columns, and Kyushu justifies a full week far from the tourist radar.
Don't miss
- The Yamanami Highway from Beppu to Aso, the country's finest ridge road
- The Aso caldera: the Kusasenri grasslands and the Nakadake crater (gases permitting)
- The rotenburo of Kurokawa Onsen with the tegata pass
- Sakurajima by ferry from Kagoshima: the Yunohira observatory and the buried torii
Our tips on the ground
- Check the Nakadake alert level that same morning on the park's website: the crater closes without notice as soon as the gases rise, and some signs only carry the information in Japanese.
- In Kurokawa, stay overnight on a weekday: the lantern-lit outdoor baths, after the day-trippers leave, are another world.
- Around Kagoshima, park facing the prevailing wind on eruption days: Sakurajima's ash scratches paintwork when wiped dry — rinse, never rub.
Our flagship guide — €29
Guide available“Japan on Your Own”, the complete edition, is out
10 chapters: day-by-day itineraries, driving and transport, a costed budget and checklists — the same method as our Namibia guide.
The guide is currently written in French — an English edition is in the works.
Before you go
Readers' questions about Volcanic Kyushu
Can you really approach the Mount Aso crater?
Yes, when the activity allows: a toll road and a shuttle climb to the rim of Nakadake, whose turquoise lake steams continuously. But the volcano decides — sulphur dioxide concentrations close access several days a month, and asthmatics are turned away even at low alert. Keep Kusasenri and the volcano museum as a plan B, superb in any weather.
Is Kyushu worth it compared with the classic Tokyo-Kyoto circuit?
It's the ideal complement to a second trip — or the antidote to a first: a tenth of the visitors, more spectacular landscapes, more authentic onsen, and a car that's genuinely useful, where Kyoto is best on foot. Two hours' flight or five by Shinkansen from Tokyo, rental on the spot in Fukuoka or Kagoshima, and the Kyushu Expressway Pass softens the tolls.