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This is part of Uncovering Japan, a collection of stories that spotlight the lesser known gems that belong on your Japan itinerary, offering everything from a wellspring of local craft and a vibrant street-food culture to traditional wellness. Read more here.
It’s so stormy and rough when I walk onto the tarmac of Fukuoka Airport that my umbrella is blown inside out, and I wonder whether my flight will even take off. Once onboard I nervously buckle up, and we take off into an uninviting sky. But just 20 minutes into our 40-minute flight from Fukuoka to Fukue—the largest and most populated of Japan’s Gotō Islands, population 38,000—the skies clear. When the small twin-propeller DHC-8-400 dips its wings to start its descent, shafts of sunlight beam down and I catch my first glimpse of this fabled, subtropical Japanese archipelago, also called the Islands of Prayer. It’s fitting for the moment, since I was uncharacteristically pleading with the gods at takeoff.
Strewn below, towering green peaks rise from the choppy but shimmering Sea of Japan. There are lush swaths of forests, wind-bent palms, isolated golden-sand beaches, and basalt coves and sleepy ports peppered with bobbing boats and wooden fishermen’s shacks. In recent years the Gotō Islands have drawn urban transplants from Osaka, Tokyo, and Fukuoka who are seeking a more relaxed pace of life, in tune with the rhythms of nature. The result has been new cafés, izakaya, galleries, and inns across the area. But the Gotō Islands are not just a picturesque destination for visitors seeking reinvention; they’ve served as a cultural bridge to cosmopolitan mainland Asia ever since they became a sanctuary from insular Edo-era Japan in the 1600s.
To really decipher the Gotō Islands requires understanding two things: their history and geography. Located just 50 miles off Japan’s southwest coast in Kyushu's Nagasaki prefecture, Fukue is the largest of the 150-plus islands and home to their biggest port and city (just 146 miles west of Jeju Island, South Korea). It’s 200 miles closer to Shanghai than Tokyo, and it and the other four inhabited Gotō islands have their own volcanic, subtropical flavor that’s like nothing else in the Land of the Rising Sun.
When Japan banned Christianity in 1614 at the dawn of the Edo era, persecuted devotees, both Japanese and foreign, sought refuge in these far-flung islands. Over the years a network of hidden Christian sites emerged, and today Fukue is home to around 50 Christian churches, some of which received UNESCO World Heritage status in 2018. But don’t think for a minute the islands are not Japanese; there are also numerous Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, and plenty of izakaya and Japanese minka (farmhouses)—all things I love about Japan that have kept me coming back to the country for the last 15 years.
Long before the Edo era, the Gotō archipelago was an important stop for the maritime traffic of China, Korea, and Japan between the seventh and ninth centuries during China’s golden-age Tang dynasty. Back then, Japan’s political and cultural envoys to prosperous China would stop on the island of Fukue before crossing the threshold onto the Asian continent. And new ideas from Asia would first land here: Japan’s famous eighth-century-born priest Kukai (Kōbō Daishi) was one such passerby; he founded the Shingon school of Japanese Buddhism, which helped spread the religion to Japan. A statue of him can be found on Kashiwazaki Cape on the north shore, and in 806 CE he is said to have visited Myojoin Temple in Gotō City, the oldest wooden structure on the island and prized for its ceiling decorated with 121 paintings of flowers and birds.
Like Kukai, I was only passing through. I spent three nights in Gotō, a decent amount of time to visit the main island of Fukue, though you could easily spend a week or more. For the first night I stayed in Fukue’s biggest city, which was renamed Gotō in 2004, after Fukue port merged with the towns of Kishiku, Miiraku, Naru, Tamanoura, and Tomie. Just across from the port where the 30-minute long jetfoil ferries from Nagasaki drop passengers is the Goto Tsubaki Hotel, an ideal spot to get a lay of the land.
A short walk from the hotel took me to Ishida Castle, one of the last castles built in Japan, completed in 1863. Only its gate and moss-covered fortified walls remain, and the site now houses the Gotō Municipal High School, a cultural center, Gotō’s tourism office, and a public library, all located within the former castle’s walls. Next door is the former Lord Gotō Residence, a traditional house built in 1861 with tatami mats, fusuma sliding doors, a Japanese garden, and a pond shaped into the Chinese character for “heart” (心) designed by Zensho, a Kyoto monk.
A five-minute walk away is Bukeyashiki street, the samurai district and a necklace of preserved regal residences crouched behind a stone wall made of moss- and fern-covered basalt rocks. At one, the Furu-sato-kan, visitors can paint their own baramon—the island’s traditional kites—or enroll in a workshop to make their own Japanese chopsticks. And shops along the street sell all manner of Gotō specialities, from local sweet potato mochi and local camellia oil especially prized across Japan to yuzu salt and flying-fish dashi stock.
The town is lovely, but as is often the case in Japan, the best of Gotō is found in the inaka (countryside), where untouched fishing villages, pristine beaches, and coastal hiking trails strewn with local flora and fauna wait to be explored. Over the next few days, I made numerous excursions across the island to such sites from my inn, Takasaki Stay, which opened in 2024 and is located in the tranquil fishing town of Takasaki, on the island’s north coast. From the inn I walked along coastal cliffs on a grassy windswept trail that's part of the 288-mile-long Kyushu Nature Trail, communing with some of Gotō’s nonhuman residents. I spied several crested honey buzzards swooping in the thermals above the sea and meadow buntings chirping in the bush, and spotted bright wildflowers like big blue lilyturf, crinum lily, and pink purslane along the footpaths. The trail also has great views of other Gotō islands Himeshima and Hisakajima sparkling on the horizon. According to the eighth-century Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, two of Japan’s oldest written demimythical documents, the archipelago was created by Izanagi and Izanami, sibling gods who stirred the ocean with a jewel-decorated spear, and the jewels and marine matter that fell off the spear later became the islands.
Another excursion brought me to Onidake Volcanic Observatory, where I climbed up to the summit, a broad green sloping treeless meadow where chilly ocean breezes and a spectacular 360-degree sea view was my reward. After, I warmed up with lunch at Onidake Four Season Village, where a secret café in the back serves up Gotō’s speciality jigoku-daki noodles (literally “hell boiling”), which are fortified with silky camellia oil and served with fish cakes, raw egg, and a camellia leaf smeared with yuzu koshu.
It was brisk at the observatory, but just 15 minutes’ drive down the hill was another four-mile-long trail that runs through coastal hummocks and along the blackened basalt Abunza Lava Coast, which teems with palms, knobby candlenut trees, and fern- and moss-covered walls. This is the warmest place on the island thanks to the offshore Tsushima current, and within minutes I was feeling Gotō’s subtropical sun. From the trail’s lookout spot, the treeless and green Mount Onidake looks perfectly symmetrical, like its summit was lobbed off by a giant samurai sword. It’s just one of 11 monogenetic basalt volcanoes and last erupted 18,000 years ago, but like so many volcanic landscapes I’ve been to, the energy of the land was alive and palpable.
But every place I visited on the island had a magnetic attraction, to both animals and humans. Tamanouramachi Arakawa, a former whaling town that’s a labyrinth of ramshackle wooden houses and a modern onsen foot bath, was built because of its access to the sperm whale migration routes. A 10-minute drive from there is the brick Imochiura Church, built in 1897 under the guidance of French missionary Father Perrieux. During the persecution of Christians throughout the rest of Japan, the church attracted worshippers who traveled over two hours each way by boat to attend Sunday mass. Its grotto is a shrine to the Virgin Mary and modeled after a similar grotto in Lourdes, France.
I’m not Christian, but I couldn’t deny the mysterious allure of the shrine. While there, I also spotted creamy white- and cocoa-colored chestnut tiger butterflies who use the Gotō Islands as a refueling stop every autumn while crossing the Sea of Japan from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Spinner dolphins, disc coral, and Genji-botaru fireflies are just a few of the living things drawn to these islands. This dynamic of living in harmony with nature is not unusual in Japan, but as with many things in Gotō, it feels amplified here. And it’s a humble and poignant reminder that humans and animals alike are drawn to forces we cannot always comprehend.
Where to eat
The food on Gotō is a real highlight, and every meal I ate was extraordinary. Konne Konne, which means “Come, Come!” is a relaxed izakaya opened by Tokyo transplant and former photo editor Yuri Sayama, who moved to Fukue in 2021. It’s here I had one of the best izakaya experiences of my 20-plus trips to Japan. Listening to gentle jazz, I feasted on kibinago and silver-striped herring, in both tempura and sashimi form, perfectly pink medallions of oven-grilled venison, Gotō pork and yuzukoshu carbonara, local shrimp, and tomato in cold dashi. Enjoy the hyper-fresh sashimi, Gotō meat and produce, and generous pours of sake and wine in a large dining room with comfortable chairs, gentle lighting, and a chill jazz soundtrack.
“We’re really spoiled with good food here,” Sayama says while she refills my sake. “The islands produce a lot of food for the rest of Japan, but we keep the best for ourselves.” Japanese-food lovers who grouse about the country’s lack of spicy food may also appreciate the fiery notes in Gotō’s offerings—a byproduct of Kyushu cuisine marked by sweeter soy and spicier notes. Think sashimi topped with rings of green chile, in addition to condiments like wasabi and yuzu kosho served alongside many dishes.
At the Onidake Observatory, Google Maps calls Onidake Four Season Village a gift shop—but head into the secret café in the back that overlooks a forest and serves up fortifying set meals of silky noodles with yuzu koshu.
What to do on Fukue and the Gotō Islands
Abunza Lava Coast
A four-mile-long trail runs along the blackened basalt cliff teeming with palms, knobby candlenut trees, and ferns, and is the warmest place on the island thanks to the offshore Tsushima current. It offers a visitor center with a nature exhibit on the region’s biodiversity and migratory fauna, and views of perfectly symmetrical Mount Onidake, one of 11 monogenetic basalt volcanoes, which last erupted 18,000 years ago.
Takasaki
This tranquil fishing village of Takasaki on Fukue’s north coast is home to grassy windswept trails that stretch along coastal cliffs and good places to see crested honey buzzards, bright wildflowers, and the other Gotō islands like Himeshima and Hisakajima sparkling on the horizon.
Tamanouramachi Arakawa
The former whaling town is a labyrinth of ramshackle wooden houses and home to a modern onsen foot bath. Nearby is the brick Imochiura Church, and its basalt grotto that’s a shrine to the Virgin Mary.
Where to stay
Located across from the ferry terminal, this 81-room, seven-story property named after Gotō’s beloved camellia flower offers views of the harbor and is ideal for shorter visits exploring the main town of Gotō.
This single-dwelling property Located in Takasaki opened in 2024 and has cloud-and-wave-themed washi shoji screens, modernist wicker furniture, a deep soaking tub, and an excellently stocked kitchen that can be used for self-catering, though the owners can hire a local chef too.
Steps from the golden sands of Hanamachi Beach, this tranquil 47-room oceanfront property that opened in 2022 is popular with hikers, snorkelers, and canoers. Don’t miss its sauna and sprawling onsen with ocean and beach views.
