A Road Trip around Kyushu

October 30, 2025

"It looks so peaceful and yet you understand at first glance that a landscape like that could only have been created in the most violent way". 

-Anonymous

It was dark by the time we got back from Korea.  For this next bit of the trip we needed a car so bleary eyed we made our way to the rental car agency near the airport.  After going through the endless paperwork we finally got the keys.

Kyushu Island

It is so tiresome, the menu of options you have to pick for what insurance coverage you want.  Why on earth did they ask us if we want volcano eruption coverage?

There she was sitting there with her powerful two cylinder engine purring.  Our car/lawn mower awaited.  It was more of a breadbox really, just a little bigger than one of those “Smart Cars” you see back home.  Still, it would get the job done as long as we didn’t weigh it down with too much luggage or say, shopped for groceries.

Our Muscle Car

We were off, at night, on the left hand side of the road.  They do that here.  I was curious why.  Like most things in history, you can blame the British.  When the Edo Period came to a close the Meiji Restoration started.  Japan was finally opening up and eager to modernize.  They hired consultants to help and most of the advice came from Britain.  So naturally, eager to embrace modernity, the adopted the British way of traveling - backwards on the left side of the road.

It wasn’t so bad really.  Japan has very modern and easy to navigate infrastructure.  The roads and highways are smooth, free of potholes, and people drive, generally, with good manners.  You just have to rewire your brain a bit to stay on the left side.

After a brief overnight at a nearby hotel, we set off the next morning.  Most of Kyushu, Japan’s southern most island, is mountainous.  The largest city here, with the wonderfully hazardous name of Fukuoka, has a population of 1.5 million and sits on the coast.

In 2010, the local government wanted to have a campaign to draw more tourists to the island. They came up with this - His name is Kumanon. He is everywhere here. I mean everywhere...including the men's room.

But we were heading interior to a National Park and that meant winding mountain driving.  Not to worry, our off road beast of a car screamed her two cylinders around curves with ease and as long as you never turned on the air conditioner, easily, albeit slowly, summited the many hills.

Our destination was Mount Aso, one of the most active volcanoes in the world.  It is listed a UNESCO World Heritage Geo Park.   Even though it erupts fairly frequently, the last one was October 21, 2021, it is considered safe to visit.  it is covered with sensors and atmosphere monitors and as long as there are no alert levels you are allowed to go.  The rental insurance for volcano eruptions started to make sense.

Mt Aso Caldera from space

Today was a good day and as we drove up to the site, the striking landscape surrounded us.  The land was beautiful with sharp hill sides, colorful rock formations, and beautiful fields of Silver Pompous Grass.  I was surprised to see so many homes along the sides of the volcano.

 I admit the landscape was beautiful, but  the ground beneath you can go boom at anytime.

We walked up to the rim of the caldera.  There in the base of the cone was a sickly green pool of boiling water with monstrous clouds of steam billowing off of it.  What we were looking at was actually a Somma cone, or Sommian in the parlance of a geologist.  It is the formation of a new cone in the base of a larger one after and eruption.  The hills that surrounded us at some distance were the actual edge of the this huge volcano’s caldera.

You see, almost all of what is now Kyushu is the result of this monster we are standing on.  Between 90,000 and 300,000 years ago this geologic kaiju exploded with unspeakable violence.  The result was the mountainous landscape we drove through to get here.  As you looked at the walls of the opening, you could appreciate the unimaginable power that forged this island.  You feel very small in comparison.  It is little wonder the mountain is still worshipped as a local deity and there is a Shinto shrine up here near the edge of the abyss.

We left the summit flying down the hill in our high performance dragster and drove for about 90 minutes to another area we wanted to visit.  We were searching for Takachiho Gorge.  This is a mountainous pass with crystal clear water coursing through narrow rock cliffs carved out by the pyroclastic blasts of Mount Aso eons ago.   You have to consider that the volcano is over 40 miles away and still did all of this carving through solid rock.

Again, the weather today did not disappoint.  It was a beautiful, clear Fall day with the leaves not yet in there full glory, but starting to change.  We descended to the river and walked along with a few hundred of our closet friends who also thought this would be a good day to visit here.  So many buses…

The leaves were just starting to turn here.  Japanese Maples are often first to go.  We have learned that likely due to climate change, we may not see the full Fall glory on the trip and the change may not occur until much later .  Also we saw Bamboo trees for the first time mixed in with the other species.  The rich volcanic earth is fertile ground for the dense forests.

We finished the the first day taking in an Onsen.  There are a numerous Onsen spas here due to the power of Mount Aso.  - From Google again, due to Onsen etiquette, here are some images of Onsens we visited.

The next day, the rain moved in.  The soft consistent downpour continued all day.

It didn’t matter.

In many ways, it was even better.