Kitakyushu

Taisho-era trading-port buildings ring the harbour, and the Blue Wing Moji footbridge lifts and lowers six times a day during daylight hours. In the former Moji Mitsui Club the room where Einstein and his wife stayed in 1922 is preserved untouched.

A lift drops about 60m and a 780m walk under the strait brings you out at Shimonoseki on Honshu. Halfway along, the Fukuoka-Yamaguchi prefecture line is painted on the floor for photos, and pedestrians pay no toll.

Built by Hosokawa Tadaoki in 1602; the present keep is a 1959 rebuild. Its top floor juts out wider than the one beneath, a style called karazukuri, and in the shoin of the garden next door you can drink matcha.

A privately tended wisteria garden where purple clusters hang over two tunnels of different lengths. In the late-April to mid-May bloom you need a dated ticket bought in advance, and it opens again for the November leaves.

From the 622m top, factory lights run in a band from the Kanmon Strait to Dokai Bay, named one of Japan's new top three night views. A cable car and then a slope car take you up; reach the top some 30 minutes before sunset and you see both dusk and the lights.

Ranked among the three great karst plateaus of Japan, its white limestone outcrops rising from the grass look like a flock of sheep. In Senbutsu Cave at its foot the deeper part means wading barefoot through cold water, so sandals are hired at the entrance.

Opened in 2015 in Kokura, where the toilet maker TOTO was founded, it lines up the real things from Meiji ceramic toilets through the development of the washlet. Admission is free, it is closed on Monday, and many people stay longer than they planned.

A neo-Renaissance timber station of 1914, restored to its original look when work ended in 2019. As the starting point of Kyushu's railways it has a 0km post on the platform, and next door at the Kyushu Railway History Museum you can climb into old carriages.

A shrine right under the Kanmon Bridge, on the shore where the strait's current runs fastest. Before dawn on Lunar New Year, at low tide, priests carry torches into the sea to cut wakame as an offering, and big ships pass just beyond the stone lanterns.

The state steelworks whose first blast furnace was lit in 1901, listed in 2015 as part of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution sites. The old head office sits inside a plant still at work, so it is off limits; you look from a viewing area built by the road.

Kitakyushu's kitchen, ten minutes' walk from Kokura Station: fish and side-dish shops along the river. Two big fires in 2022 burned part of it, and rebuilding has left old lanes mixed with new premises. Many shops close on Sundays.

Shimonoseki's fish market, a five-minute ferry hop from Mojiko. Friday to Sunday the floor fills with sushi stalls selling piece by piece, eaten on the upper deck or the waterfront facing the strait, and the stalls pack up by early afternoon.

A railway museum in the 1891 red-brick head office of the old Kyushu Railway, beside Mojiko Station. Steam engines and old express cars in the yard can be boarded, and children claim the driving simulator and mini trains, with queues on weekend mornings.

A museum in Higashida, Yahatahigashi, nicknamed the Journey of Life. Giant dinosaur skeletons line a vast hall that stops you in your tracks, and families often pair it with the science museum and mall next door for a day.

A manga museum in a building linked to Kokura Station's north exit, centred on Leiji Matsumoto, who grew up in Kokura, and his Galaxy Express 999. The reading room shelves tens of thousands of volumes, and one ticket buys a whole day of reading.