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The Official Kyushu Travel Guide

Kyushu Hiking Adventures

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Kyushu Hiking Adventures

Hike on historical trails, across volcanic calderas, through primeval forests

Immerse yourself in the landscape by exploring on foot

Trekking is the most intimate form of slow travel, where you actively engage your senses and interact with the natural environment, one step at a time. Immerse yourself in a wild landscape, or rediscover familiar sites from new perspectives.

Kyushu OLLE’s various courses around the region guide you along historic paths and scenic nature trails, past samurai residences, and through castle ruins, under pale cherry blossoms or fiery autumn leaves. Savor a close encounter with ignimbrite cliff carvings or geologically spectacular columnar joints. Follow the Karatsu course along coastal rock formations to fresh seafood stalls, or walk the Okubungo course through bamboo forests to a historical onsen.

Aso-Kuju National Park offers exceptional trekking experiences on both the Aso caldera and the Kuju mountain ridge, within a geopark of volcanic phenomena. Feel the undulating relief of the constantly changing topography underfoot as you hike through a living palette of bright pink and green Kyushu azaleas, overlooking moors and wetlands, past smoking solfataras, and fuming craters. At the end of your trek, don’t forget to channel all that geothermal energy into a restorative bath at a mountain hot springs.

Among Kyushu’s outlying islands, Yakushima is still inhabited by several-thousand-year-old endemic Japanese cedars, where you can hike from the subtropical primeval rainforest all the way up to the alpine climate of the highest peaks in southern Japan. No matter which route you take through this mythical moss-covered jungle, you’ll have the unique opportunity to rediscover a prehistoric ecosystem ruled by trees. And once you surrender yourself to the visceral experience of trekking among ancient giants and living fossils, you will never be the same again.

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