For those of you familiar with Japan's geography, you know that Kyushu is not a city, but an entire island with hundreds of cities and towns. So you're probably wondering why I named this section Kyushu. Well, it's because two weeks before I returned to the US, I took a one-week trip all the way around Kyushu with the same friend who accompanied me to Tokyo the first time I went. The first day we went to Kumamoto, the next day we headed down to Kagoshima and stayed two nights, the fourth day we headed to Miyazaki, the fifth day we traveled up to Beppu, and then the last day we headed home. It was a great trip.

Since I had been to Kumamoto already with the JTW program that I was studying in, my friend and I just roamed around the city in the afternoon and waited for the fireworks show that evening. The next day we left early for Kagoshima at the southernmost tip of Kyushu, a trip that we knew would take a good bit of time and patience. We arrived in the heat of the late afternoon and took the ferry over to Sakurajima, the island in the center of the bay that separates Kagoshima into an east and west side. Sakurajima is actually a volcano (which I believe is still active), but evidently it was safe enough to place a youth hostel there. We stayed two nights in the youth hostel, which was one of the nicer and cheaper hostels I found in Japan. It even had its own onsen (hot spring), which I soaked in for long periods of time both nights we were there. I would highly recommend this hostel to anyone planning a trip to Kagoshima. After the second night there, we moved on up the east coast of Kyushu to Miyazaki, which had some excellent beaches. It is also famous for a small island called Aoshima (blue island) connected to one of its main beaches by a small bridge. My friend and I explored the island for a bit and I took some nice pictures, but on the way back to the beach we noticed some woman in a skimpy bikini taking pictures of herself with Aoshima in the background. I didn't think anything of it until we got a little closer and I noticed it was a guy dressed up as a woman. I found it rather odd that he would be out there taking these photos (and I'm pretty sure he wasn't doing it as a joke) in front of children and families out playing on the beach, but it didn't seem to bother him. I also had to remember that I was in Japan after all. Our last stop was Beppu, the city of onsen. The city is naturally endowed with the many hot springs that attract so many tourists yearly, although it has also developed into a major convention city for Japanese industries and large corporations. The last day we headed back to Fukuoka, stopping briefly in another famous onsen town called Yufuin to change trains. Thus ended my last journey of my first year in Japan, and it was definitely a good one to end on.

The pictures from this trip are grouped by city, so just click on the city name below to see its pictures:

• Kumamoto - These are all pictures from the fireworks show we attended the night of our stay.
• Kagoshima - All sorts of pictures from around Kagoshima, including some nice shots of Sakurajima.
• Miyazaki - Plenty of pictures of Aoshima, as well as a few other places around Miyazaki.
• Beppu - These pictures include several good aerial shots from Beppu's beautiful new tower behind their convention center, as well as a few shots of Yufuin, a small resort town we stopped at on our way back to Fukuoka.