JAPAN, MAY 2026

In the three years since my first trip to Japan, there has been extensive coverage of Japan's overtourism problem – how even the famous Japanese hospitality, as robust as one of their earthquake-proof towers, is finally starting to buckle under the sheer weight of numbers – how visiting Japan is now such a cliché for the Perfection set that the really cool people are all going to China instead. So what was most striking about this, my second trip, was how many breathtaking experiences I had completely to myself. This is because I went to Kyushu, the southernmost part of Japan.

I'm not presenting myself as some kind of genius for realising that Japan has places to go outside of Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. Actually, what first inspired me in this case was that several years ago I met Tom Downey, author of some of my favourite travel writing about Japan, and he had a lot of praise for Fukuoka, Kyushu's largest city. And the thing is, while everyone and their uncle is going to Japan now, most people only go to Japan once, and Kyushu pretty much never makes it on to anyone's debut itinerary. So there were really not a lot of Westerners in evidence.

Which is not to say there were not a lot of tourists. On the contrary, there were plenty of Koreans, because Fukuoka is closer to Seoul than it is to Tokyo (and indeed it's less than 150 miles across the water from Busan). Plus, Kyushu gets domestic tourists from further north. But even with all these short-hoppers, most of the places I went were somewhere between uncrowded and dead quiet. The kind of saturation point one reads about in Kyoto is a very long way off. (It may also have helped that the Chinese have been urged by their government to stop going on holiday to Japan.)

Before I go any further, I know there's one question you're all desperate for me to answer: did I use take same anti-jetlag measures as last time, and did they work as faultlessly? I did, and they did.

Private island

The island of Yakushima, where I spent four days, doesn't have an overtourism problem. If anything, it has an undertourism problem. Well, problem isn't the right word, but I did find myself in a state of continual disbelief. How can somewhere that's this magical, but also pretty easy to get to, and replete with tourist infrastructure, and not in any way a secret, possibly be so empty????? No doubt this would be less extraordinary for people of my parents' generation: my mental image of tourism in the 1980s is that if you took a ferry to any Greek island that didn't have a page in the Rough Guide to Greece you would be the first foreigner to walk down the beach since the German occupation. But for someone like me, who has done almost all of my travelling in the internet era when absolutely nothing can survive undiscovered, it felt uncanny.

What makes Yakushima so wonderful is as follows. The island is a thickly-forested massif surrounded by a 60-mile ring road. Travel a few miles anywhere along this ring road, and you will find a site of staggering natural beauty. A few more miles, and there will be a restaurant selling burgers made of local venison. Then another site of staggering natural beauty. Then a cafe selling gelato made from local fruits. Then another site of staggering natural beauty. Then a hot spring bath. And so on. All the way around the island. Is there anywhere else like this on earth? A place that is simultaneously so sublime and so convenient? I rented an ebike and went clockwise around the whole island over the course of two days, and I have never had a higher rate of experiences that left me almost tearful with awe. Not only that, but for much of the time I was the only human being in sight!

The first was the Sarukawa banyan tree, a sprawling network of entangled branches in the middle of the woods, one of a number of places I went that felt like something from a video game – maybe one by FromSoftware or Naughty Dog – in the sense that only in video games do you have the chance to explore these environments that are inspired by real places but are heightened, curated, optimally angled for the best view, in a way that no real place could ever be – or so you think, until you come somewhere like this. Next was the Kozue Corridor canopy walk. The ostensible substance of this experience, seeing the treetops from a wooden walkway, sounded like it would be mildly diverting at best. Yakushima has plenty of opportunities to see treetops; you don't really need to go out of your way for that. Yet this turned out to be one of the most beautiful hours of my entire life, not because of the treetops but because of a kind of fairy-tale ceremony that you are guided through by the elderly couple who built and operate it. I won't describe this any further, partly because I don't want to spoil it for you in case you ever go, and partly because I think in my attempts to convey its magic I would just sound tedious and incoherent like someone going on about their ayahuasca trip.

Then, after stopping to marvel at the Senpiro Falls, I dropped my rucksack at my Airbnb just in time to head back out to the Hirauchi Kaichu Onsen, which you can only visit when the tide is out, because it consists of rock pools fed by warm water from underground, close enough to the sea that if you want to cool off you can just move to the next pool down and feel the spray on your face while you watch the sun set. Dinner was at an anomalous but lovely Indonesian restaurant, which I include among the very emotional experiences of the day because if the owner hadn't cheerfully agreed to cook a plate of mie goreng for me after the restaurant's ostensible closing time I would have had to go to bed hungry. Then I got up very early so I could bike up to the Seibu Rindo Forest Path while it was still thronged with macaques and deer... This was all in less than 24 hours and I haven't even mentioned everything!

I don't want to overstate how unspoiled Yakushima is. Miyanoura, the main town, has three large gift shops and a North Face, all with parking for coaches. But I almost never encountered more than a couple of other tourists at a time. So why isn't the place more overrun? Actually, there is one obvious answer. The rain. Yakushima is the rainiest place in Japan. I was there for four days, and it rained for two of them. If it had rained for all four, I imagine I would be a lot less effusive (especially considering I was on a bike), and during my four-hour hike up a former logging trail to Taikoiwa Rock, through the forest that inspired Princess Mononoke, the continuous downpour did grave damage to my phone, my trainers, and my spirits. Plus, although Yakushima does have a few small museums, there is very little to do there when you aren't outdoors. The ideal strategy might be to arrive in Japan with a somewhat flexible itinerary so you can time you trip to Yakushima for when the short-term forecast is good, except this probably isn't possible because there aren't that many hotels and guesthouses on the island and they all fill up in advance. So I think you just have to hope for the best and take a good rain jacket.

Disaster area

The idea of going somewhere just because it has an interesting history puts me in mind of school trips to Ypres. If you find an old bullet casing or something, great, but otherwise you are just looking at a field. However, Nagasaki is really worth it, because you get such a visceral sense of all the threads twining through its history. You can visit the reconstruction of Dejima, the Dutch and Portuguese trading post which David Mitchell evokes so well in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Because of this European influence, Nagasaki was one of the early centres of Christianity in Japan, with even the local warlords converting before they later turned against it. Jacob de Zoet I read years ago, but on this trip I read Shusako Endo's Silence, which mentions Jesuit priests being boiled alive in Mount Unzen's volcanic springs in the aftermath of Shimabara Rebellion. I didn't see Mount Unzen, but I did visit Shimabara, where you're aware of its brooding presence: several houses that were buried by pyroclastic flow in 1991 have been preserved as memorials. (Like the hundreds of stones I saw laid out in a moat as part of the reconstruction of Kumamoto Castle, this felt like a piece of Land Art.)

Nagasaki's prosperity as a trading centre resulted in a lot of shipyards, which ultimately made it a prime target during the Second World War. And the second atomic bomb (tested by Oppenheimer at Trinity) happened to drop almost directly on top of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral, built only a few years after the ban on Christianity in Japan was finally lifted, and in 1945 still the largest church in Asia – leading the writer Takashi Nagai to suggest that the Christians of Nagasaki had become martyrs to peace, burned in the heat of the bomb almost like the early Christians burned in the heat of the volcano... All these themes feel so interconnected and tangible, whether you're at Shimabara Castle seeing the crude little crosses that the rebels made while they were under siege, or at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum seeing the melted remains of Nagai's wife's rosary, or even just at the Fukusaya bakery eating a sponge cake called castella that was invented because Nagasaki was the very first place in Japan to import sugar. (And I haven't even mentioned the ubiquitous local porcelain: though I still think of myself as a young man, on this trip I found myself developing what I can only describe as a sincere interest in the history of ceramics.)

Eight generations of a family called the Nakayamas worked as translators at Dejima, and one of them compiled an early Dutch-Japanese dictionary. The whole dynasty is buried in a cemetery that sprawls down a hill overlooking the city, the paths and terraces of its south side now crumbling and overgrown. I hate to repeat myself, but this was one of the most gorgeous places I've ever been in my life, and yet it's not remotely on the tourist trail: as someone notes on Google reviews, 'This is such an incredible place, I'm baffled there weren't more visitors (none, actually). Well, it means I had the place to myself.' That's one of only two Google reviews for the cemetery. Two! Even the Kozue Corridor canopy walk has 53 Google reviews!

Other star systems

The very idea of using Google reviews for sightseeing still feels a bit odd for me. Isn't it supposed to be for reviewing restaurants? Isn't it a bit absurd to give a banyan tree a rating out of five stars? But the reality is, when I'm travelling, I find out about more interesting things just by scanning the area on Google Maps than I do from any other source, and in many cases the actual reviews function like a wiki where people are helpfully sharing whatever might be useful to know. As hesitant as I am to lavish praise on the company at a time when Google search has degraded to the point of total uselessness, Google Maps is a gift to humanity. This is one benefit we do have over previous generations of travellers: yes, they were able to go to places that weren't completely picked over already, but they also must have strolled obliviously past a lot of cool stuff.

And although I do now use Google Maps for waterfalls, it also continues to be very good for restaurants. In fact, I am going to suggest it's better than Tabelog, the Japanese equivalent. This is a heretical opinion among Japanophiles. For instance, the Sydney Morning Herald writes, 'Tabelog is absolutely not like TripAdvisor or Google reviews. Tabelog is actually useful. It’s reliable. It’s trustworthy. And the reason it is all those things is because Japanese people really know food, and they really know how to review restaurants... If a restaurant in Japan scores more than 3.5 stars on Tabelog, you know it’s seriously good. If a restaurant in Japan scores more than 4.5 stars on Google, meanwhile, all you know is that it’s popular with foreigners.' This is what most people on the internet will tell you, but after two trips to Japan, I increasingly think it's bullshit.

One issue is that once a restaurant is well-known enough that out-of-towners go there for a specific dish, it becomes hard to dislodge. For instance, Ramen Kokutei in Kumamoto is famous for its black garlic ramen, and Kurobota in Kagoshima is famous for its (coincidentally) black pork cutlets. Both are near the top of the Tabelog rankings, but in both cases I detected an unmistakeable whiff of tourist-trap complacency. The problem, I suspect, is that although Tabelog ratings reflect Japanese opinion, they don't necessarily reflect local opinion. Yes, the Japanese have high standards, but they're in a good mood when they go on holiday just like everyone else. A lot of domestic tourists probably come to Kagoshima on holiday and they go to Kurobota because it's where everyone tells you to go and they have a nice time and they give it a generous rating, so it maintains a score it does not really deserve.

Whereas many of the very best meals I've had across my two trips to Japan – especially the ones that really came out of nowhere – I came across on Google Maps. The sweet spot, I've discovered, is a place with a 4.5 to 5 star average based on about 30 to 90 ratings (not more, not less). Jeer all you want, but I have found that to be more reliable than any Tabelog data. One example on this trip was Todoroki in Nagasaki – 32 reviews, 4.6 average – a yakitori joint which, like many restaurants in Japan, refutes the old saw that the best places to eat are always the busy ones: there was only one other table occupied while I had an absolutely unforgettable meal of chicken hearts, pork ribs, beef diaphragm and the like. In the West, if a grill or BBQ restaurant has over a hundred dishes on the menu, you expect the bulk of them to taste pretty much the same, but here every single little plate had its own distinct identity. Another example was Azuma Sushi in Fukuoka, where I walked in one lunchtime, was served a superb eight-piece omakase at the counter for 3,300 yen (£15), and walked out feeling stunned that a meal so good could be had so cheaply and so casually. I mean, people will pay £15 for a couple of things from the fridge cabinet at Itsu!

Propping up the bar

Nobody is ever going to tell you that in Japan the best places to drink are the busy ones. How busy can a six-seat Shinjuku cocktail bar possibly get? Still, I was a little bit disconcerted in Kyushu by how often I was the sole patron in bars. Yes, I was often going in on a weeknight, but that was true on my last trip too, and it wasn't nearly so noticeable in those cities. Famously the economics of Japanese nightlife allow for much smaller, quieter bars, but with a lot of these places I did wonder if they can really tick along forever selling just a few drinks a night or whether they are vestiges of a model that for whatever reason has ceased to add up. This is the flipside of the overtourism issue: there are parts of Japanese culture – high-end sushi counters being another – that now lean on foreign subsidy to survive.

At Bar&Records Ambient in Fukuoka – so-called because it's a music-focused bar but instead of playing jazz or rock it plays electronica – the bartender acknowledged my intrusion with what seemed at first like a chilly gaze. But after I'd drunk some of my whisky, he asked where I was from, and from then on he put on only British music. When he played 'Roads', I said, 'Oh, I love Portishead!' and he told me it was his favourite of their songs. After that we just listened without speaking, two diffident men on opposite sides of a bar, mutually but separately moved by a beautiful piece of music on an expensive sound system. Then I finished my drink and once again left him alone in his bar. A lot of Japanese people combine a profound hospitality with a profound reserve, and I suppose one way of resolving this paradox is by opening an extremely cool bar that almost nobody will ever come to.

MY OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS

Sushi: my big final-night meal was an 18-course omakase at Sushi Ryori Ichitaka in Fukuoka. I was seated next to a guy from Seoul who was there with his wife and daughter. He was wearing what I later identified as £20,000 Hublot Big Bang, and he'd paid the corkage to bring in a bottle of Yamazaki 12 Year. The moment I offered even the smallest pleasantry he called for another glass so he could pour me what must have been a quadruple shot of Yamazaki, and then proceeded over the course of the meal to finish most of the rest of the bottle before briefly passing out on his stool. I'm not complaining about this – it was funny, and dispelled the stifling feeling of ceremony that can sometimes descend upon an expensive omakase counter – but all the same I regret it on his behalf, because this was breathtakingly good sushi, certainly the best I've ever had. Even at Sushi Udatsu in Tokyo, I still had misgivings about how much can be wrung from what is after all a single bite of food flashing momentarily across your senses. But here a piece of baby squid or smoked bonito resonated like a temple bell, the taste staying with you for pretty much as long as you focused on it.

However, I also have to note that this omakase cost about 40,000 yen, or £190, whereas my lunch at Sushi Udatsu in 2023 was only 13,000 yen, or £60. I've never had high-end sushi in London, but my guess is an equivalent meal to Sushi Ryori Ichitaka, if such a thing even exists, would cost £300 to £400; so in that limited sense it's "good value", but for any sane person Udatsu would remain my recommendation for where to eat sushi in Japan.

Bar: I did go to one bar where every single seat in a good-sized room was filled, and that was Bar Ishizue in Kagoshima, which serves the sweet-potato shochu for which the region is famous. Ishizue has over 1,600 types, more than any other bar in the world, and the English-speaking owner will personally help you choose one. I'll also mention Milestone in Nagasaki, a jazz listening bar with a view of the Nakashima River which has been run since 1986 by Hideyuki Natsume, the son of two atomic bomb survivors.

Ramen: Kyushu is famous as the home of tonkotsu ramen, and the best bowl I had was at Ramen Tontoro in Kagoshima. Here, the pork is served not sliced but rather shredded, so it disintegrates into the broth when you so much as look at it.

Patisserie: Grandir, a well-known bakery from Kyoto, now has a branch at Tenjin Station in Fukuoka. I had a fermented butter brioche bun, which was like what croissants might eventually turn into after fifty million years of evolution on a low-gravity planet with no predators.

Gelato: As alluded to above, Gelato Sora-Umi on Yakushima, which uses locally grown citrus such as the daidai, the loquat and the tankan. Obviously, this place is going to have an aura of specialness just for existing, but I promise it was objectively first-rate gelato. And, yes, we're talking about a roadside gelato shop open four hours a day that even by the standards of this remote Japanese island is located quite a long way from anything, so this may not appear to be one of my more actionable recommendations, but all the same I simply INSIST that you MUST go.