Nichinan and Kushima

Kyushu, Japan · Town / small city, Sea / Beach

Almost everything here hangs off a tree: the Obi domain lived by selling its cedar, and to get it to the sea without rounding the cape it cut a kilometre-and-a-half canal in 1686 that turned Aburatsu into a port. What remains is the castle town, the first in Kyushu the state protected, with stone walls topped by tea hedges; a vermilion shrine set inside a sea cave where you throw clay pellets at a turtle-shaped rock; and seven moai that are the first replica the Rapa Nui council of elders formally authorised. And forty kilometres on, in Kushima, the two animals: the horses that live loose on Cape Toi and the macaques of Kojima, who in 1953 began washing their sweet potatoes and taught the world that an animal can have culture.

The essentials

Getting there

Train + bus — Two neighbouring municipalities that behave differently. The Nichinan half works by train: JR’s Nichinan line runs out of Miyazaki and stops at Obi, Nichinan, Aburatsu and Nango, so the castle town and the port need no car. Udo shrine has no station and is reached by bus from Miyako City in Miyazaki, about seventy minutes, plus ten on foot from the stop; Sun Messe is on the same coast road. That makes Obi and Udo a day trip out of Miyazaki. The Kushima half is another matter: Cape Toi is forty-odd kilometres from Obi along the coast road and about twenty from Kushima station, and the macaque island is reached from a jetty with no public transport nearby. Without a car you can see all of Nichinan and look in on Kushima by taxi; with one, both in two days. Reckon also with paying to enter Cape Toi, and with the boat to the island depending on the swell.

What it is genuinely strong in

🔭 Viewpoints & panoramas

Frequently asked questions about Nichinan and Kushima

What to do in Nichinan and Kushima: 20 activities

• Cape Toi and its loose horses 2.5 h must-see Kushima · 75 min

  At the southern point of this coast, across some five hundred and fifty hectares, live native Japanese horses that are a national natural monument. They are not wild by origin: they descend from a herd left to graze free in the Edo period and never penned again. Around twenty foals are born each spring. You go in through the Komadome gate, the only one, and pay a contribution towards conserving the cape: five hundred yen for a car and two hundred for a motorbike, 7:30 to 18:00 from April to September and until 17:30 from October to March.

• Kojima, the island of the potato-washing macaques 2.5 h must-see Kushima · 60 min

  An uninhabited island of a little over thirty hectares, five minutes away by boat, with around a hundred Japanese macaques smaller than usual. It has been a national natural monument since 1934, but that is not what it is known for: in 1953 a juvenile began washing her sweet potato in a stream to get the sand off, the others copied her and the habit passed from one to another until it stuck. It was the case that taught the world an animal can have culture. Some have now moved from the stream to dipping it in the sea, which salts it as well, and there are those who separate wheat from sand by throwing it in the water. The boat needs no reservation but depends on the swell: call the skipper that same morning. Go early, when they are active.

• Obi, the castle town 2 h must-see

  It was the capital of a fifty-one-thousand-koku domain held by the Ito family, and it keeps its early Edo street plan almost intact: a near-square grid with the Sakatani river wrapped round three sides, the senior samurai set near the castle, the middle ranks beyond them, the merchants after that and the lowest ranks at the edge. The walls are of Obi stone or rounded cobbles and are topped with tea hedges, which is the detail you will not see in any other preserved district. The state protected it on 18 May 1977 over 19.8 hectares, and it was the first in Kyushu to be given that status.

• Udo Jingu, the shrine inside the cave 1.5 h must-see

  The main hall, painted vermilion, sits inside a sea cave cut into the cliff, and you walk down to it: it is one of the few shrines in Japan you descend to rather than climb. It is credited with childbirth, child-rearing and matches, and inside the cave are the rocks and water known as the breast rocks, along with the Namikiri shrine. Open 6:00 to 18:00 every day and free. It is in Nichinan, not Miyazaki, even though that is where people come from: seventy minutes by bus from Miyako City and another ten on foot.

• The eat-and-walk map 3 h must-see

  Obi has solved the problem of pretty towns where you do not know what to do: you buy a map with five vouchers and spend them on things to eat or small gifts in the shops of the old town as you walk. There are two versions: a thousand yen with entry to two historic buildings, or sixteen hundred with entry to all six — the castle museum, the Matsuo no Maru, the Yoshokan, the Komura Jutaro memorial, the old Yamamoto Inpei house and the merchants’ museum — which comes to fourteen hundred for university students and eleven fifty for school age. You buy it at the ticket hut in the castle car park or at the shop in Obi station. Without the map, a combined ticket to the six is eight hundred yen and a single entry three hundred.

• The seven authorised moai 2 h must-see

  Seven moai on a hill above the Pacific, reproducing the Ahu Akivi group, and the point is not the copy but the permission: according to the prefecture’s tourism association it was the first replica in the world formally authorised by the Rapa Nui council of elders. The park is twenty hectares with a viewpoint, an insect and butterfly museum and panels on world heritage. Admission is a thousand yen for adults, seven hundred for junior and senior high and five hundred from age four; it opens 9:30 to 17:00 and closes Wednesdays, though it opens over New Year, Golden Week, Obon and public holidays. Free parking for two hundred and twenty cars.

• Obiten 0.5 h

  Blue fish from the Hyuga coast — sardine, horse mackerel, Spanish mackerel, mackerel, flying fish — ground whole and mixed with tofu, seasoned with miso, soy and black cane sugar, and deep fried with no batter. They call it tempura and it is not. The tofu leaves it softer and fluffier than satsuma-age, and the black sugar leaves it sweet, which is the part that throws you the first time. It is thought to have been invented in the Obi domain in the Edo period: there was already a lot of miso cooking here, and in the mid-nineteenth century sugar cane arrived with migrants from the southern islands. Eat it straight out of the fryer.

• The 1686 canal 1 h

  The domain had a logistics problem: the cedar came down the Sakatani and Hirotogawa rivers, but to reach the harbour it had to round the cape in open sea. In 1686 the Ito ordered a canal dug, one thousand four hundred and fifty metres cutting across by land, and with that Aburatsu stopped being a cove: it became a timber yard, the domain’s shipyard and a refuge harbour for fishermen. It is still there, still water between houses, and it is where you best understand why this town exists.

• The castle grounds and the Matsuo no Maru 1.5 h

  What is left of the castle is the walls, the stone stairways and a stand of Obi cedar growing inside the enclosure; the main gate was rebuilt with hundred-year-old cedar. The restoration ran from 1974 to 1979, right around the protection of the town itself. Inside you can visit the Matsuo no Maru, a reconstructed shoin-style residence, and the history museum, which holds some two hundred and twenty objects from the domain.

• The only lighthouse in Kyushu you can climb 0.75 h Kushima · 75 min

  White, on the point of the cape, and with something no other lighthouse in Kyushu has: you can go up inside it. Three hundred yen from junior high age. From the top you see the whole cape with the horses spread across the grassland, which is the best way to get a sense of how many there are and how big the place is.

• The Umisachi Yamasachi train 2 h booking

  Two carriages lined inside with Obi cedar, the timber this district lives on, running between Miyazaki and Nango along the coast, calling at Obi, Nichinan and Aburatsu. The run takes a long hour and a half southbound and a little less coming back, and at the start an attendant tells the tale of the sea god and the mountain god the train is named for. Every seat is reserved and none can be bought on board: they go on sale a month ahead at ten in the morning. The Miyazaki to Nango fare is ¥3,140 plus the express supplement. Note: in September 2026 JR announced a refit for spring 2027, with six green-class seats facing the Pacific and a higher supplement.

• How to approach a horse that belongs to nobody 0.5 h Kushima · 75 min

  The city publishes the rules and they are worth reading beforehand, because they are not about manners but about safety. Do not touch them, because they react unpredictably. Do not feed them: it ruins their health and gets them used to people. Do not come at them from behind, but slowly and from the front, inside their field of view. And there is a thirty-kilometre limit on the roads around the cape, because the horses cross them. The signal to learn is the ears: flattened back means fear or anger, and then you withdraw calmly.

• Obi cedar 0.5 h

  It is the thread half this destination hangs from. The cedar here is high in oil and takes a knock, which made it ideal for ship hulls: it was squared off into logs that could be stacked, it was called Hyuga bengo, and it went to the shipyards of the Seto Inland Sea. Selling it was what the domain lived on, and getting it to the sea is why the Aburatsu canal was dug. It still grows inside the castle grounds, it is in the main gate, and it lines the inside of the line’s tourist train.

• The devil’s washboard at Udo 0.75 h

  A rock platform the falling tide uncovers in front of Udo, its strata rippling in parallel lines in what this coast calls the devil’s washboard. It is the same phenomenon you see at Aoshima forty kilometres north, but here it comes without a promenade or a crowd. Check the tide table before you go, because at high water there is nothing to see.

• The fortune pellets 0.5 h

  In front of the hall, below, there is a turtle-shaped rock with a square hollow in its back, and the game is to land a clay pellet inside it from above. There is a rule: men throw with the left hand and women with the right. If it goes in, the wish is granted. It is one of the few things at a Japanese shrine done by aim, in front of an audience.

• The red brick warehouse 0.5 h

  A brick warehouse from 1922 beside the canal, one of those the port put up when it lived on tuna and timber. Residents of Nichinan saved it, buying it in 1997 so it would not be pulled down, and the following year it became a registered national cultural property. Entry is free, 9:00 to 18:00, with no fixed closing day.

• The spring training camps 3 h only about three weeks in February

  Nichinan takes two professional league teams in February, which for a town this size is a lot. The Hiroshima Carp train at Tenpuku Stadium, the first team in the first half of the month and the second squad until the end of it, and the Seibu Lions set up theirs at Nango Stadium. The exact dates are announced in December, so check before booking: in 2026 the Carp first team were there from 1 to 12 February, resting on the 4th and the 9th, the second squad until the 25th, and the Lions from the 1st to the 23rd. Practical note: there is no parking at Tenpuku, but there is a free shuttle bus and free parking at Aburatsu port.

• The Yoshokan, the lord’s house 1 h

  When the Ito stopped being lords of a castle in the Meiji era, they moved here, into the largest house in the senior samurai quarter, directly opposite the main gate. It is the piece that explains the end of the story the rest of the town tells: the same family, the same town, and a house instead of a fortress. It is covered by the town’s combined tickets along with the Matsuo no Maru, the history museum and the Komura Jutaro memorial.

• The cape centre 0.75 h Kushima · 75 min

  It is called Pakalapaka and it is the only stop with a roof anywhere on the cape: a lounge with a view, something to eat, local products, toilets and a step-free baby room open around the clock. It opens 9:00 to 17:00 and closes Tuesdays, or the next day if Tuesday is a public holiday. Somewhere with nothing else for several kilometres, that matters.

• The dolphin park on Shibushi bay 2.5 h Kushima · 55 min

  Daikoku Iruka Land, on Shibushi bay: a dolphin show, rabbits and turtles you can feed and a penguin parade every day at two in the afternoon. It is the place that rescues an afternoon with children when the boat to Kojima does not sail, which on this coast happens often.

What only happens on specific dates

• The spring training camps about three weeks in February

Chains well with

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