It’s an inevitability that there’s a trade off between the beauty of a destination and its accessibility; the most incredible scenic beauty tends to be far from any town, train station or bus stop. Japan generally does really well at making these places easy to get to without a car (as compared with the UK) but sometimes there’s no way around it – you need to drive to the thing. I don’t have a license so car hire isn’t an option for me. This was the predicament I found myself in when considering how I was going to get to Takachiho Gorge, a famously beautiful location in the mountains of central Kyushu. The solution was to join an organised group tour to get there.

I don’t know what kind of snobbery it is but I have a strong aversion to group tours. I basically never do them, preferring to take things at my own pace and explore in my own way. I find the other members of the group annoying because *pushes hair behind ear* I’m not like other tourists. Regardless, I found myself doing a day trip to Mt. Aso and Takachiho Gorge with four other travellers and our tour guide, a lady from Yorkshire named Helen. It was overall great and I saw all the places I wanted to see, and learned a lot about what life in the region was like.

Helen described living through the huge earthquake of 2006, where one town was completely demolished and people in the surrounding areas were so terrified of after shocks that they slept in their cars for months afterwards. She talked of how she met her Japanese husband just four weeks before her work visa expired and how they managed to be together anyway (I love stories like this). She also taught us lots about the geography and geology of the area.

Takachiho Gorge is one of those places I saw a photo of and immediately knew I had to visit. We admired the views from all different angles and hired a rowboat to go on the water. Because we went in threes, I joined up with Kitty and Angie from Hong Kong, a mother/daughter duo who generously paid for the hire in exchange for me providing the manpower. We got some great photos and admired the amazing power of the waterfalls.

Mt. Aso is the largest active volcano in Japan, and presides within the incredible Aso caldera, one of the world’s largest. We drove through it and over the rim towards Takachiho, then on the way back went up to the crater itself to see the plumes of steam and gas. The landscape at the summit was otherworldly, the only vegetation being sporadic shoots of Japanese knotweed, an almost unkillable plant that British homeowners hate. Eruptions are thankfully not too frequent, but scars from the most recent were evident everywhere; the tarmac of the car park had been patched in hundreds of places where boulders had landed.

Bizarrely, despite this being the top of a volcano, there was a brand new shopping complex with a bougie cafe, full of fashionable young Korean tourists. As I was dressed in old clothes suitable for the outdoors, I felt very self conscious as I sat on a step eating an ice cream – also being one of the only white people there made me kinda stand out. Oh well.

What I so far haven’t mentioned is that the jumping off point for this day tour was the city of Kumamoto. Smack bang in the middle of Kyushu, I think it’s inevitable that any visitor to the island will come through here. For some reason, I believed it to be a completely featureless and ugly city not worth ten minutes of one’s time – turns out I was completely wrong. I only had time for a walk around the city centre one evening and was impressed to find that not only did Kumamoto have one of the most stunning castles I’ve seen in Japan, but the city was bustling, walkable and full of interesting shops. Pleasantly surprised, I made a mental note that next time I come through here, I’ll have to dedicate a little more time to the place!

I had survived my tour group experience and ticked off two of Kyushu’s most impressive natural sites. Everything was going according to plan but there was no time to get complacent! From Kumamoto I was heading south once again to my last stop on Kyushu before I ran out of land; Kagoshima. More about that in the next one.