Shimabara and Unzen

Kyushu, Japan · Town / small city, Mountain

A volcanic peninsula on the far side of the Ariake Sea, reached by ferry from Kumamoto. Down at sea level, Shimabara: a castle, a samurai street with a running water channel down the middle and carp living in it, because spring water comes up everywhere here. Up at 700 metres, Unzen Onsen and its thirty-odd jigoku venting sulphur steam. And between them, Mount Fugen and the memory of the 1991 eruption.

The essentials

Getting there

Ferry — The natural way in is across the Ariake Sea by ferry from Kumamoto, because the road around the head of the gulf is a very long detour. Two separate companies run Kumamoto Port to Shimabara Port: Kumamoto Ferry's Ocean Arrow, the fast one, which crosses in about 30 minutes, with six daily sailings each way (a seventh on weekends and holidays from April to December) at 1,600 yen per adult, 800 per child and 4,400 for a car under 4 m with the driver included; and Kyusho Ferry's conventional car ferry, which covers the 21 km in about 60 minutes with ten round trips a day from 7:00, at 1,180 yen per adult, 590 per child and 3,200 for a car under 4 m. There is a third, cheaper crossing further north: the Ariake Ferry between Nagasu (Kumamoto) and Taira, about 45 minutes, sailing on the hour from 6:00 to 20:00 from both ports, 500 yen per adult and 2,500 for a car under 4 m. Without a ferry: JR to Isahaya, then the Shimabara Railway, a single-track diesel line along the peninsula's north coast to Shimabara and the port; from Hon-Isahaya it is 1,680 yen to Shimabara station and 1,780 to Shimabara-ko (fares effective 1 April 2026), and a little over an hour. There are also direct buses from Nagasaki. Within the peninsula, Shimatetsu buses climb to Unzen Onsen, but for the south (Hara, Kuchinotsu) and for moving freely between villages a car makes a real difference.

Frequently asked questions about Shimabara and Unzen

What to do in Shimabara and Unzen: 28 activities

• Crossing the Ariake Sea from Kumamoto 1 h must-see

  Two different companies link Kumamoto Port with Shimabara Port, and it is worth knowing which is which. Kumamoto Ferry's Ocean Arrow is the fast one, about 30 minutes against the conventional ship's 60, with six sailings a day each way (seven on weekends and holidays from April to December): 1,600 yen per adult, 800 per child and 4,400 for a car under 4 m with the driver. Kyusho Ferry's conventional ship covers the 21 km in about 60 minutes, runs ten round trips a day from 7:00 and is much cheaper: 1,180 yen per adult and 3,200 for the car; during its dry-dock weeks in June and December it drops to five. On foot you need no reservation; with a car, Kumamoto Ferry takes bookings from a month ahead and you must be at the quay thirty minutes before departure, while motorbikes and bicycles are always first come, first served.

• The jigoku of Unzen Onsen 1.5 h must-see Unzen · 40 min

  A bare hillside in the middle of the hot-spring town, with some thirty named fumaroles (Daikyokan, Oito, Seishichi) and wooden walkways between them. The steam reaches 120 degrees; it is a strongly acidic sulphur system and it smells like it. Entry is free and the site is open 24 hours, though there is no lighting at night; the area car park is paid. There is a steam bench where you rest your feet to feel the heat of the ground.

• Unzen Volcanic Disaster Memorial Hall 2 h must-see

  The Gamadasu Dome, built on land reclaimed with material that came down off the volcano, tells the story of the eruption that began in November 1990 and of the pyroclastic flow of 3 June 1991, which killed 43 people, among them journalists covering the eruption and volcanologists studying it. Shimabara's official count for the whole episode is 44 dead and 2,511 buildings affected. Open 9:00 to 18:00, last admission 17:00, with irregular closing days worth checking; 1,050 yen for adults, 740 for junior and senior high school, 530 for primary. There is an indoor play area for children.

• Shimeiso, the garden of rising water 1 h

  A wooden villa built between the late Meiji and early Taisho eras as a Shimabara doctor's second house, with a pond fed by some 3,000 tonnes of spring water a day and carp moving half a metre from the tatami. You go in, take off your shoes and simply sit and look. Open daily 9:00 to 18:00; 400 yen for over-18s and 200 up to high school. A nationally registered monument since 2008 and a registered tangible cultural property since 2014.

• Staying in Unzen Onsen 12 h booking Unzen · 40 min

  Unzen Onsen is not a district of a town: it is a whole village of hotels and ryokan up in the hills, inside a national park designated on 16 March 1934, one of Japan's first three alongside Kirishima and the Inland Sea. Steam from the jigoku drifts between the streets and summers are markedly cooler than on the coast, which is why foreign residents of Nagasaki and Shanghai came up here to escape the heat. Book ahead; the Shimatetsu bus climbs from Shimabara station in about 50 minutes, seven services a day.

• Climbing Mount Fugen 4 h Unzen · 50 min

  The volcano's old summit, 1,359 metres, is walked from Nita Pass, usually by combining the ropeway with the ridge path: half a day of mountain trail with real ascent, nothing technical but not a stroll either. Unzendake has been at volcanic alert level 1, the lowest on the Japanese scale, since 1 December 2007, and at that level the trails are walked; the Heisei-Shinzan dome, by contrast, is off limits, and the Meteorological Agency itself warns that approaching its fumaroles can cost you your life. Check the current level on the Japan Meteorological Agency site the day before, and follow the signs and Nagasaki Prefecture's trail hazard map.

• Nita Pass and the Myoken ropeway 2.5 h Unzen · 50 min

  Nita Pass, at about 1,100 metres, is reached by a one-way loop road 11.3 km up from Unzen Onsen; the Ministry of the Environment warns that it is closed off in bad weather, not just in wind. From the pass a paid ropeway covers the last stretch up Mount Myoken, with the Heisei-Shinzan dome opposite and the Ariake Sea below. Neither the road nor the ropeway runs at night, and the ropeway stops in strong wind: early morning is the time to go.

• Omisaki, the station at the water's edge 2 h

  A platform with no building and the water of the Ariake Sea right below the edge: the Shimabara Railway bills it as the station closest to the sea in Japan, and yellow handkerchiefs left by visitors hang from the fence. Shimabara station sells the Oumisakippu combination ticket for 1,000 yen, which covers the return trip, a handkerchief and four hours of parking. There is no car park at Omisaki: the company specifically asks people to come by train.

• Shimabara Castle 1.5 h

  A white five-storey keep rebuilt in 1964 on the castle Matsukura Shigemasa began in 1618 and took seven years to finish: an outer enceinte four kilometres around with seven gates and thirty-three turrets, far too grand for the size of the domain, and the taxes that paid for it lie behind the 1637 rebellion. It was abandoned in 1874. Inside, the museum of the peninsula's Christian history, from the mission years to the persecution. Open daily 9:00 to 17:30, last admission 17:00; 700 yen for adults and 350 from primary to high school, with parking charged separately at 500 yen.

• The houses buried by the mudflows 1 h Minamishimabara · 15 min

  In the Mizunashi river basin, eleven houses were left standing exactly as the mudflows of 8 and 14 August 1992 left them, with the mud up to the eaves; three of them sit under tent cover to protect them from the rain. The park stands on several metres of deposit. One important note: the Mizunashi Honjin Fukae roadside station closed on 30 November 2021, but the park, its car park and its toilets remain open and free, according to Minamishimabara city hall. It is a quarter of an hour by car from Shimabara.

• The neighbourhood where the carp swim 1 h

  In Shinmachi, the street where Shimeiso stands, the channels along the houses carry spring water so clean that the town put koi in them to live. It is a two-block walk, free, with the Seiryutei visitor centre halfway along to sit down for a while. It works just as well with children and in the middle of August, when the water comes up cold.

• The ruins of Hara Castle 2 h Minamishimabara · 50 min

  A headland above the sea at the southern tip of the peninsula, with the outline of an abandoned castle and little else: this is where some 37,000 peasants from Shimabara and Amakusa shut themselves in in December 1637 under the young Amakusa Shiro Tokisada and held out against some 120,000 shogunate troops until the castle fell in April 1638 and almost all of them were killed. It is a national historic site and, since 30 June 2018, one of the components of the World Heritage "Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region". Open and free to walk. Come by car; the bus from Shimabara is a long haul.

• The samurai street and its water channel 1 h

  The Shimo-no-cho district preserves a street of lower-ranking samurai houses with a stone channel running down the middle of the roadway: it was the neighbourhood's drinking water and still flows from a spring at Sugiyama-gongen Kumano Shrine two kilometres north, maintained by the residents themselves. The houses that are open can be visited free of charge, 9:00 to 17:00.

• Eggs cooked in the jigoku steam 1 h Unzen · 40 min

  In the middle of the fumarole field a stall steams eggs with the heat of the jigoku itself: two for 200 yen, five for 400 and a four-egg souvenir pack for 400, plus hot-spring lemonade at 300. Open daily 10:00 to 17:00 and closes early once they sell out; in bad weather it may not open at all. Children love it, and it is the best trick for getting them through the walk.

• Facing Heisei-Shinzan 1.5 h

  The lava dome that grew between 1990 and 1995 and ended up taller than Mount Fugen is called Heisei-Shinzan and has been a national natural monument since 2004: it stands at about 1,483 metres today, and 1,486 when it was named in 1996, as the eruption ended. You see it close up from the Heisei-Shinzan Nature Centre on the Tarukidaira plateau, about 2.5 km from the summit: free entry, 9:00 to 17:00, closed Tuesdays and on 31 December and 1 January. Around it you can watch the vegetation coming back over the 1993 pyroclastic deposits. The dome itself still fumes and approaching it is forbidden.

• Guzoni, the stew that came out of a siege 1 h

  A broth with round mochi and more than ten things on top: chicken, conger eel, lotus root, burdock, freeze-dried tofu, shiitake, omelette, leaf greens. The town hall tells it as the stew the rebels cooked during the three months of the siege at Hara Castle, pulling together what the mountain and the sea gave them, and even credits it, with a careful "it is said", to Amakusa Shiro himself. The Ministry of Agriculture put it on its 2007 list of a hundred Japanese regional dishes; the city publishes the list of places that serve it.

• Kanzarashi, the spring-water sweet 1 h

  Little balls of glutinous rice flour chilled in spring water and served in a light honey syrup: Shimabara's own sweet, and it exists because the water is there. You eat it in the tea houses of the Shinmachi district and at Shimabara Mizuyashiki, an Edo-period merchant's villa extended in 1872 with an upper floor added in 1897, now a tea room with the pond inside: open roughly 11:00 to 17:00, with irregular closing days.

• Kojigoku bathhouse: black wood and sulphur 1 h Unzen · 45 min

  A public bath from 1919, slightly apart from the town, with plenty of flow and timber stained black by the minerals in the water. It is the place in Unzen where bathing is still what it was before tourism: plain tubs, opaque sulphur water and people from the valley. Unzen's water is a strongly acidic sulphate-sulphur type and leaves the skin tight; leave silver and jewellery off.

• Miyama-kirishima azaleas at Nita Pass 2 h Unzen · 50 min only blossom in late May

  In late May and early June the slope at Nita Pass turns pink with miyama-kirishima, the dwarf azalea of Kyushu's mountains, and the pass fills with people before nine in the morning. This is Unzen's real high season and the loop road jams up: the ropeway and the car park are much easier early. The exact dates shift from year to year and are published by the ropeway and the Unzen tourism office.

• Muhyo: Unzen's frost-covered trees 2 h Unzen · 50 min only foggy, frosty days

  On the coldest winter days the valley fog freezes onto the branches at Nita Pass and Mount Myoken and leaves the whole forest white and bristling: this is muhyo, a well-known phenomenon in Unzen that the ropeway announces when it happens. It does not occur every day or in every winter equally, and it needs fog and frost at the same time; the ropeway's report is the thing to check. Dress properly: it is a good deal colder up here than down at sea level.

• Obama's 105-metre foot bath 1 h Unzen · 60 min

  Obama Onsen sits on the peninsula's west coast, and its draw is a 105-metre channel of hot-spring water at the water's edge, which Unzen city bills as the longest foot bath in Japan: there is a stretch for sitting, a stretch for walking through the water and even a stretch for dogs. Next to it are steam pots for cooking vegetables and seafood. It closes one Wednesday a month for maintenance, and the steam pots are out of service then too. It faces west, so the hour to be there is sunset over Tachibana Bay; bring a towel.

• The cheap crossing: Ariake Ferry, Nagasu to Taira 1 h Unzen · 30 min

  The other way across the gulf, further north and at half the price: the Ariake Ferry runs from Nagasu (Kumamoto Prefecture) to Taira in about 45 minutes, sailing on the hour from 6:00 to 20:00 from both ports, fifteen services a day. It costs 500 yen per adult, 250 per child, 2,500 for a car under 4 m with the driver included and 1,000 for a bicycle. Taira is half an hour by car from central Shimabara.

• The monument to the martyrs of Unzen 1 h Unzen · 40 min

  Among the walkways of the jigoku stands a stone in memory of the Christians the domain's authorities executed here, in the boiling water, during the persecution of the early Edo period. It is this peninsula's own chapter, before the rebellion, and it explains why Unzen appears in the missionaries' records. A memorial service is held on the third Sunday of May each year.

• Walking Shimabara's spring-water route 2 h

  The town hall signposts a walking route of about 90 minutes that strings together the springs of the old centre one after another: neighbourhood wells, washing basins still in use, ponds in private courtyards and fountains where people fill their jugs. It is how you come to understand why Shimabara is called the town of water, and it costs nothing.

• Ferry from Kuchinotsu to Amakusa 1 h Minamishimabara · 60 min

  From Kuchinotsu, the port at the southern tip, the Shimatetsu ferry crosses to Oniike in the Amakusa islands in about 30 minutes: thirteen services a day Monday to Friday and fifteen at weekends and on holidays, between 7:15 and 17:45. It costs 580 yen per adult, 330 per child and 3,400 for a car under 4 m (October to December 2026 fares, fuel surcharge included). This is how you chain this peninsula to Amakusa without going back through Kumamoto.

• Hand-stretched somen from the southern peninsula 1 h Minamishimabara · 45 min

  Nagasaki is Japan's second prefecture for hand-stretched somen, behind Hyogo, and the south of this peninsula is where it is made: in the Nishiarie district of Minamishimabara alone the Ministry of Agriculture counts between three and four hundred noodle workshops, family operations still using the traditional kneading and rolling bowls. The town hall dates the arrival of the technique to about four hundred years ago. The noodles are eaten cold with dipping sauce in summer and in hot broth the rest of the year, and packs of them are the sensible souvenir here.

• Lake Shiratsuchi and the Otonashi River 1 h

  This small lake in the middle of town was not there before 1792: it appeared when the collapse of Mount Mayuyama sank the ground and opened the springs, in the disaster that devastated the Shimabara coast and, by tsunami, the Higo shore across the gulf. Some 40,000 tonnes of water a day still well up from its bed, feeding the Otonashi, the "soundless river", so called because it was dug on so slight a gradient that the water makes no noise. A flat, free walk ten minutes from the castle.

• Walking the spa village and yusenpei 1 h Unzen · 40 min

  You can walk the whole village of Unzen Onsen in half an hour, past souvenir shops from another era and the workshops that make yusenpei, the thin flour-and-sugar wafers that are the village's sweet, bought fresh and still soft. The Unzen tourism office also runs a workshop where you grill them yourself on the iron, one at a time. A good stop for a rainy or foggy day, and there are plenty of those up here.

What only happens on specific dates

• Muhyo: Unzen's frost-covered trees foggy, frosty days
• Miyama-kirishima azaleas at Nita Pass blossom in late May

Ready-made routes through Shimabara and Unzen

Chains well with

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