Shrines, museums, parks, and the spots in between, with the access details worked out.
A hillside park in Nagasaki holding the Western houses of the foreign settlement, among them the oldest wooden Western building in Japan.
NagasakiA quarter of white-walled storehouses along a canal in Okayama, built on the rice trade and preserved since the 1960s.
Kurashiki · OkayamaThe fan-shaped island in Nagasaki that was Japan's only opening to the West for more than two centuries, now rebuilt street by street.
NagasakiAn abandoned coal mining island off Nagasaki, once the most crowded place in Japan, left empty since the mine closed in 1974.
NagasakiA gorge in Miyazaki where cliffs of columnar rock rise from the Gokase River, with a waterfall that can be reached by hired boat.
Takachiho · MiyazakiThe only Confucius temple in Japan built in full Chinese style, put up in 1893 by the Qing government and the Chinese community of Nagasaki.
NagasakiA merchant quarter on the Ono River in Chiba that grew rich on river trade, and the first district in the Kanto region put under preservation.
Katori · ChibaA brick church of 1908 on an island in Nagasaki that now has no inhabitants, built by seventeen households of former hidden Christians.
Ojika · NagasakiA shrine at the centre of the island of Iki, founded in 811, to the small god Sukunahikona and to Sugawara no Michizane.
Iki · NagasakiA local museum in a park built around Hisagozuka, one of the largest burial mounds in Nagasaki, covering the area from the stone age to the Edo road.
Higashisonogi · NagasakiA Chinese temple in Nagasaki founded in 1629 by merchants from Fujian, with two buildings that are National Treasures.
NagasakiThe first Chinese temple built in Nagasaki, founded in 1620, and the place where the Obaku school of Zen began in Japan.
NagasakiA hot spring town in Saga with 1,300 years behind it, a wooden bathhouse of 1876 and a gate that is an Important Cultural Property.
Takeo · SagaThe site of a seventh-century mountain fortress in Kumamoto, built against invasion from the mainland, with four buildings reconstructed.
Yamaga · KumamotoA wide, low waterfall in Kumamoto that can be walked behind, left by the eruption that formed the Aso caldera 90,000 years ago.
Oguni · KumamotoThe head shrine of the forty thousand Hachiman shrines, founded at Usa in 725, with three halls that are a National Treasure.
Usa · OitaA sand bath on the shore at Ibusuki, where hot spring water heats the beach and bathers are buried in black volcanic sand.
Ibusuki · KagoshimaA public bathhouse of 1879 in Beppu, rebuilt in 1938 under a great curved gable, with a sand bath as well as hot water.
Beppu · Oita
